Fine Print

Every two weeks at GCI Canada we have a Book Club, which is cool for three reasons: (1) We learn a lot by discussing certain relevant books, (2) It encourages me to actually read a book rather than get my fix of information from the Internet, and (3) I finally get to use the “Book Club” category tag that I thought was impossible.

So, the current one we are discussing is Good to Great by Jim Collins. It’s not the newest of books (published in 2001), and there’s not even a hint of social media in there (so far, we’re only on chapter 2) but the ideas that Collins puts across through his research are still relevant for today’s companies who are trying to make that leap to greatness.

One topic that came up is the fact that a very successful leader of a well-known billion-dollar tech company isn’t comfortable taking questions from an audience. They’d rather have a one-on-one with an interviewer, in front of an audience, instead. That got me thinking, and I thought it a bit strange.

I’m not the loudest guy in the room, but I know that if I was the founder of a successful company, I would relish the thought of taking random, on-the-fly questions. The reason being is that I would certainly have an idea of my game plan, and the path that myself and my team wanted to take the company would be clear. So, that would give me the confidence to be able to answer any question — it would be my opinion, and my thoughts on where the company should be in five years based on certain strategies.

Success or (hopefully not) failure would follow those decisions, but at least some strategy would be in place to try and achieve the former.

Anyone else out there prefer not to answer questions about their company? If not, why? If so, why?

~ John Carson, Senior Digital Media Specialist, GCI Canada