Develop Your Hedgehog

Good to Great by Jim Collins is one of my favorite business books.

However, whenever I bring up the Good to Great concepts with my small business customers I am often met with a lot of resistance. The major objection is that they are a small business, and the companies cited in Good to Great are all big companies. Well, the fact of the matter is that the concepts in Good to Great are universal concepts that apply to any organization no matter what size it is.

Take for instance, Trinity College. Trinity College is a small college of just over 2,200 students located in Hartford, Connecticut. Given their location, they would of course be in direct competition with Ivy League schools. Yet they didn’t let size stop them. They applied the Hedgehog concept from chapter five. They asked the three simple questions:

1. What are we passionate about?


2. What can we be the best in the world at?


3. What drives our operational engine?

And they succeeded.



Congratulations to Trinity College Men’s Squash Team for achieving a 202 game winning streak. The longest active winning streak in any intercollegiate varsity sport. And, congratulations on their 11th straight national title. Trinity won the title on Sunday with a 5-4 victory over Princeton.

Read more about Trinity College and their amazing record at: http://www.trincoll.edu/


So what’s your “hedgehog”? Get started with The Hedgehog Concept by working in the Hedgehog Laboratory at: http://www.jimcollins.com/

If you need additional help with your hedgehog and the related budgets and strategy, consider working with a Principa CPA. These CPAs are a global consortium of consulting CPAs who are dedicated to working with small businesses. Business owners that work with Principa CPAs have access to tools and resources to help them grow their business, gain a better understanding of their business, develop greater management control, increase profitability, and, perhaps, most important – achieve peace of mind when it comes to their business. Learn more about Principa CPAs at: http://www.principa.biz/

Brenda Richter, CPA is a member of the Principa Alliance.