Good To Great, by Jim Collins

A Genius with a Thousand Helpers
Chapter 3, pages 46–47

The geniuses seldom build great management teams, for the simple reason that they don’t need one, and often don’t want one. If you’re a genius, you don’t need a Wells Fargo–caliber management team of people who could run their own shows elsewhere. No, you just need an army of good soldiers who can help implement your great ideas. However, when the genius leaves, the helpers are often lost. Or, worse, they try to mimic their predecessor with bold, visionary moves (trying to act like a genius, without being a genius) that prove unsuccessful.

Eckerd Corporation suffered the liability of a leader who had an uncanny genius for figuring out “what” to do but little ability to assemble the right “who” on the executive team. Jack Eckerd, blessed with monumental personal energy (he campaigned for governor of Florida while running his company) and a genetic gift for market insight and shrewd deal making, acquired his way from two little stores in Wilmington, Delaware, to a drugstore empire of over a thousand stores spread across the southeastern United States. By the late 1970s, Eckerd’s revenues equaled Walgreens’, and it looked like Eckerd might triumph as the great company in the industry. But then Jack Eckerd left to pursue his passion for politics, running for senator and joining the Ford administration in Washington. Without his guiding genius, Eckerd’s company began a long decline, eventually being acquired by J.C. Penney.¹⁸

The contrast between Jack Eckerd and Cork Walgreen is striking. Whereas Jack Eckerd had a genius for picking the right stores to buy, Cork Walgreen had a genius for picking the right people to hire.¹⁹ Whereas Jack Eckerd had a gift for seeing which stores should go in what locations, Cork Walgreen had a gift for seeing which people should go in what seats. Whereas Jack Eckerd failed utterly at the single most important decision facing any executive—the selection of a successor—Cork Walgreen developed multiple outstanding candidates and selected a superstar successor, who may prove to be even better than Cork himself.²⁰ Whereas Jack Eckerd had no executive team, but instead a bunch of capable helpers assembled to assist the great genius, Cork Walgreen built the best executive team in the industry. Whereas the primary guidance mechanism for Eckerd Corporation’s strategy lay inside Jack Eckerd’s head, the primary guidance mechanism for Walgreens’ corporate strategy lay in the group dialogue and shared insights of the talented executive team.