What’s your hedgehog?
I recently listened to the Dare to Lead podcast by Brené Brown where she interviewed Jim Collins. The conversation between Jim and Brené was interesting because they both are grounded theory researchers, but he has studied organizations and companies, while she has used the same approach to study individuals.
The hedgehog, the flywheel and level 5 leaders are all concepts sticking with me, but I want to first focus on the hedgehog and it’s application to individuals.
Jim created the concept of the ‘hedgehog’ in his book, Good to Great. This is the intersection of (1) what you are passionate about, (2) what you are ‘the best in the world’ at and (3) what drives your economic engine.
Source: https://www.jimcollins.com/concepts/the-hedgehog-concept.html
Why a hedgehog?
It was interesting to hear Jim discuss in the podcast how he names concepts or creates the conceptual vessels. The pattern emerged from the data and the Venn diagram above was clear. He kept coming back to the Isaiah Berlin essay, “The Hedgehog and The Fox.” Hedgehogs just know one thing as opposed to a fox, who knows many things. The coolest thing about this is that the quirky name allows people to remember this concept when it’s been described AND it causes people to stop and ask, “What’s a hedgehog?” if he brings it up. He said if he just asked people if they had a strategy they would default to yes.
My Hedgehog
My own hedgehog in progress is coaching open leaders. I am passionate about developing leaders, I am very good at listening to clients and colleagues and asking questions to explore their issues and my work with 1-1 clients is starting to drive the economic engine. 🥳
Organizationally, Julie Lowndes and I have asked ourselves, “What’s the hedgehog?” for Openscapes and we even added a hedgehog and a fox to our Openscapes drawing. We are passionate about Open practices. We are the best at supporting research teams as they transition towards more open practices through the flagship program, Openscapes champions and those cohorts are driving our economic engine! 🥳
Now what?
Beyond using this as focusing tool for myself and my own work, the concept of a hedgehog has been useful in recent coaching conversations. Often the conversation centers around looking for clarity in a service offering or business idea and as I work with a client the hedgehog starts to emerge.
Once you define your hedgehog then it is a tool for disciplined decision making, you can use it as a test for determining priorities, deciding on projects or clients and with that clarity, it simplifies your business and life. As Jim says, “You give yourself over to a single pursuit.”
What’s your hedgehog?