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Good To Great, by Jim Collins
First Who...Then What
Chapter 3, pages 44-45
“First who” is a very simple idea to grasp, and a very
difficult idea to do—and most don’t do it well.
It’s easy to talk about paying attention to people
decisions, but how many executives have the discipline of David
Maxwell, who held off on developing a strategy until he got the
right people in place, while the company was losing $1 million
every single business day with $56 billion of loans underwater?
When Maxwell became CEO of Fannie Mae during its darkest days,
the board desperately wanted to know how he was going to rescue
the company. Despite the immense pressure to act, to do something
dramatic, to seize the wheel and start driving, Maxwell focused
first on getting the right people on the Fannie Mae management
team. His first act was to interview all the officers. He sat
them down and said, “Look, this is going to be a very hard
challenge. I want you to think about how demanding this is going
to be. If you don’t think you’re going to like it, that’s
fine. Nobody’s going to hate you.”12
Maxwell made it absolutely clear that there would only be seats
for A players who were going to put forth an A+ effort, and if
you weren’t up for it, you had better get off the bus, and
get off now.13
One executive who had just uprooted his life and career to join
Fannie Mae came to Maxwell and said, “I listened to you very
carefully, and I don’t want to do this.” He left and
went back where he came from.14
In all, 14 of 26 executives left the company, replaced by some
of the best, smartest, and hardest-working executives in the entire
world of finance.15
The same standard applied up and down the Fannie Mae ranks as
managers at every level increased the caliber of their teams and
put immense peer pressure upon each other, creating high turnover
at first, when some people just didn’t pan out.16
“We had a saying, ‘You can’t fake it at Fannie
Mae,’ ” said one executive team member. “Either
you knew your stuff or you didn’t, and if you didn’t,
you’d just blow out of here.”17
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