In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about how successful companies have to right person driving the bus and the right passengers in the right seats on the bus. When I first heard this, I thought how cute but now I know it to be true. I love this book but this is the quote that I keep going back to again and again.
This is especially real to me as I was a school bus driver in my twenties.
If you have the right driver but the bus is filled with bratty kids who run up and down the aisles and throw things at the bus driver than the bus driver could still crash because their attention is on the fire in the back of the bus and not on the road. Even if their attention is off the road for 3 seconds it would be enough to crash.
If you have a bus filled with the right passengers who make sure that everything is going well and when problems arise they can deal with them. Such as a sick kid or the bus going -off course or even changing course if it needs to because it’s original destination is wrong or there is a detour ahead.
See Jim Collins explain it better below.
I see how this plays out at work. You can have a great team who are good passengers but some of your team members are in the wrong seats and others are passengers who are on the wrong bus. They need to change buses. You also have the right passengers in the right seats. Also, the driver needs be able to drive the bus. Dispatch needs to let the driver drive the bus. They provide insight but in the end the driver should be in control of the bus not the dispatcher who doesn’t know the road ahead.
Skipp Symes 