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| Katie Cambron |
This semester as part of my honors seminar course “How to be a CEO,” I was required to read Good to Great by Jim Collins. The book is the result of a five-year research project which explored if and how good companies become great companies. What I assumed would be another required class reading that I would never think about after the semester turned out to be a book that I know I will keep on my bookshelf to reference for years to come.
One particular chapter discussed the necessity of businesses to possess strong discipline. I found this section to be one of the more interesting and potentially most applicable to my life as a student and future careers in the business world. To some degree, I think we all possess an innate yearning to be the best at something, or at least the absolute best that we can be. As seen with the Good to Great companies, we can’t be the best student or the best business leader without having discipline.
The author tells the story of Dave Scott who won the Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon six times. Committed to sticking to his diet, Scott would literally rinse off his cottage cheese to remove extra fat. This cottage cheese theory serves as a reminder to always go the extra mile; even when I think I am doing enough, there is actually something more that I could be doing. With school for example, I devote hours to studying at night and on the weekends. However, during breaks between classes I tend to waste time with social media. After reading the chapter on discipline, I know that if I were to “rinse my cottage cheese” I would sacrifice that social media time to get prepared for the next class by reading over previous lecture notes or getting ahead in the text.
The author tells the story of Dave Scott who won the Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon six times. Committed to sticking to his diet, Scott would literally rinse off his cottage cheese to remove extra fat. This cottage cheese theory serves as a reminder to always go the extra mile; even when I think I am doing enough, there is actually something more that I could be doing. With school for example, I devote hours to studying at night and on the weekends. However, during breaks between classes I tend to waste time with social media. After reading the chapter on discipline, I know that if I were to “rinse my cottage cheese” I would sacrifice that social media time to get prepared for the next class by reading over previous lecture notes or getting ahead in the text.
The author also discusses the effect on success with businesses lose their entrepreneurial zest and innovation. When things start heading in the direction of success, we tend to settle into our routines and essentially become lazy, thinking that if we keep with our current motions that achievement will continue. This lack of innovation that hinders many companies from ever becoming truly great affects students too. Coming into college, I had a high GPA, high test scores, and AP credits. Naturally, I thought that what worked for me in high school would work for me in college. I learned the hard way, and still am learning that the environments around me are constantly changing, the course material, the methods and successes of other students, and even the distractors that come my direction. Thus, the study habits that I developed in high school weren’t necessarily applicable to the college classroom. In order to stick to my hedgehog concept (my ultimate end goal), which has always been to finish my undergraduate degree with a GPA that I am proud of in four years and be admitted to law school, I needed to revamp the steps that I was taking to achieve that goal. This included stepping out of my comfort zone to utilize my professors, campus tutoring services, and even my peers. Coincidentally, all of this involved me facing brutal facts, which all great companies must do, that college is harder than I had anticipated and that other students will excel in some classes more than myself. It is when I faced these truths and realities that I was able to develop a new, disciplined course of action in order to stick to my hedgehog concept.
When I first started reading Good to Great, I thought that its lessons would only be applicable to businesses. Yet what I found was that my future career and my life as a student now aren’t all that different in terms of work ethic and determination. At the end of the day, it’s about knowing what you want to achieve and sticking to that goal, as well as having the trained thought to make necessary adjustments to your course of action. Whether I’m in a college lecture hall or a corporate board room, these principles of dedication and discipline will remain influential in all that I do to become the best.
Katie Cambron, of Springfield, Ky., is a sophomore McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville. She is studying economics and political science.