Should You Become More Hedgehoggy?

Jim Collins’ Hedge­hog con­cept was inspired by philoso­pher Isa­iah Berlin’s essay called ​“The Hedge­hog and the Fox”, in which he described the dif­fer­ence in how the two crea­tures think:

• Fox­es are lovers of com­plex­i­ty and many mov­ing parts.

Fox lead­ers have all kinds of ideas to improve a busi­ness or dri­ve sales. But when they try three or four of them at the same time – even if the ideas have ele­ments of bril­liance – they burn a lot of ener­gy to put on a show which cre­ates chaos and distraction.

• Hedge­hogs thrive on mak­ing the com­plex sim­ple and stick to fun­da­men­tal ideas.

Hedge­hog lead­ers pick one thing and do it well, con­sis­tent­ly and reli­ably – again, again and again.

While one isn’t inher­ent­ly bet­ter than the oth­er, in the world of lead­er­ship, says Collins, hedge­hogs usu­al­ly win.

And when you apply your cre­ativ­i­ty to hedge­hog think­ing – be more ​‘hedge­hog­gy’, as an exec­u­tive recent­ly said – you’ll strength­en what you already do well.

Three Sim­ple Ideas

Collins’ research shows that when lead­ers stay clear and focused on three sim­ple ideas, they’re much more like­ly to be successful:

1. What they can be the best in the world at, even though it might not yet be true
2. What dri­ves their eco­nom­ic engine — usu­al­ly it’s a prof­it or a gross prof­it per key busi­ness unit
3. What they are pas­sion­ate about.

Hedge­hog think­ing has come up in recent conversations:

• In an inter­view with Push Oper­a­tions’ CEO Tina Lum found here.
• With a CEO of mul­ti­ple com­pa­nies who believes in ​‘stay­ing in your lane”. When­ev­er his peo­ple approach him to ver­ti­cal­ly inte­grate the busi­ness or move into an adja­cent indus­try, he con­sis­tent­ly advo­cates for stick­ing with the one thing the com­pa­ny is real­ly good at.

They were estab­lished, had skills and capa­bil­i­ties, and had proven them­selves in a cer­tain space, so there were many oppor­tu­ni­ties to scale with­in their lane. He knew from expe­ri­ence that, if they tried to do some­thing dif­fer­ent, the fail­ure rate would be very high.

If you’re a mas­ter­ful retail­er, don’t become a man­u­fac­tur­er. If you’re a mas­ter­ful man­u­fac­tur­er, don’t become a cre­ator of raw materials.

Now, you could argue that you should always try new things, but you have to be very, very careful.

Bet­ter to just dou­ble down on what you’re already doing well to become even better.

The Chal­lenge

• How clear is your Hedge­hog principle?
• In what area of your busi­ness could you or your team become more ​‘hedge­hog­gy’?

Oth­er Blogs

• Get­ting Big­ger & Bet­ter with True Growth
• If It Doesn’t Dri­ve Your Fly­wheel, Just Say No
• Prof­it or Cul­ture First?

Old­er Podcasts

• The Most Impor­tant Num­ber CEOs Rarely Measure
• My Gross Mar­gin is Drop­ping. What Should I Do?