PART I of II

Jim Collins has attempted, as with many of his peers, to go from management guru to life sage. He has failed with his latest book What To Make of a Life[:] Cliffs, Fog, Fire and The Self-Knowledge Imperative.

In short, his book offers very few insights that haven’t been said elsewhere. His overarching theme is not compelling. He struggles to develop a new Tolkien-like set of terms—but they aren’t helpful. At most, he has collected an interesting summary of profiles of various current and historical figures (i.e. Benjamin Franklin, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, Meryl Streep, Michael J. Fox, etc.).

Collins tries to come up with original terms such as “encoding.”  He explains that “encodings are durable capacities of a person’s intrinsic construction that lie within, awaiting discovery through the experiences of life” [23]. It sounds a lot like a person’s “wiring” or “gifting.”

To begin, he does not provide a description like “the meaning of life,” other than the use of his phrase “what to make of a life” (which is not explained in the book). He talks about being “out of frame.”  Collins notes that, "Life worked best for the people in our study when they deployed themselves into activities that aligned with a big bright set of their encodings.” He refers to it as “in frame” [49].

It sounds similar to being “in a flow state.” This is a well-known concept honed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, who defines “flow” as an optimal state of consciousness—or "being in the zone"—where a person is completely immersed, focused, and involved in an activity for its own sake. At the same time, Collins avoids common terms. For example, throughout his entire voluminous work, he doesn’t address the concept of “calling,” whether in faith or secular contexts. Other authors, such as Robert Greene, a secular writer, take a different approach. He notes in The Laws of Human Nature that: “The way to avoid such a fate [aimlessness] is to develop a sense of purpose, discovering our calling in life and using such knowledge to guide us in our decisions” [356].

As with many secular writers, Collins doesn’t seem to realize that billions of people of faith have thought a lot about meaning for centuries. He doesn’t refer to faith, but he does give the example of Chuck Colson, the Watergate henchman who founded Prison Fellowship, and he does refer to the faith of various people profiled.

As a secular humanist, Collins can only describe things but not give any values-based directive on what people can do with his book. How could he? He has no basis to advise one course of action over another.

He states: “Let me be clear right up front: It is not my intention to direct or advise you on what to make of your life” [3]. He explains, this is decidedly not a self-help book. But it is a self-knowledge book” [3]. Again, Collins isn’t about to recommend anything.

Thus, he offers this vague guideline: “The purpose of this book is to share with you what I learned in a ten-year research project into a set of remarkable lives. I set out to learn how the people I studied addressed the Big Question of what to make of a life, and how they addressed it again at different phases of life” [3].

He has a modest objective to “yield new insights” [3]. For this low bar, he had minimal success in reaching that objective. He routinely offers unoriginal thoughts:

• He notes that we will meet challenges such as what he refers to as “cliffs”—I don’t think that should be news to anyone
• “This study taught me that even the most accomplished people can land in a major fog funk” [8]
• One of his favourite findings is that many people did “significant and ground-breaking work well past the midpoint of their lives” [9]
• “Think back to the people we’ve discussed so far in this book. None of them defined success primarily in terms of money.” [99]
• “Every person in our study, no matter how successful, experienced disappointments” [174]
• Due to this book, he realized that “perhaps the most important ingredient in effective leadership: leading from your encodings.” [309]

He reviews the role of luck. He notes that “Luck is something that happens to you, largely out of your control. Return on luck is what you make of your luck (good or bad) when it comes. The question is not whether you will get luck, both good luck and bad, but what you do with the luck you get” [231]. His discussion of luck is interesting but not helpful. Discussing some of the profiled leaders, “The key is that each made the most of the lucky cards she got” [107].

His definition of leadership: “Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done” [310]. He further explains that "leadership has nothing to do with position or power or personality” [312]. This basic point and many others have been explained by authors such as John Maxwell many years ago in The 5 Levels of Leadership: Proven Steps to Maximize Your Potential.

Sadly, the author of Good to Great has, with this book, gone from great to bad.