"Good to Great to Elite"

Someone sent me a video of a post-game speech that Penn State University's head football coach, James Franklin gave following Penn State's second straight 1-point loss to Ohio State University on September 29, 2018.  It's pretty good, so I am going to post it here today.

He started off by saying, "The reality is that we've gone from an average football team to a good football team to a great football team and we've worked really hard to do those things.  But we're not an elite football team yet."

There's no question that Ohio State University has an elite football team.  Penn State's football team, on the other hand, is a very good - and perhaps great - football team.  The fact that they lost to Ohio State again in the 2019 and 2020 season only emphasizes the separation between "good to great to elite."

Franklin goes on to suggest that the level of dedication, commitment, and hard work required to be an elite football team is even more than what was required to get to being a great football team.  "As hard as we have worked to go from average to good, from good to great, the work that it’s going to take to get to an elite program is going to be just as hard as the ground and the distance that we’ve already traveled. It’s going to be just as hard to get there. Scratch and claw and fight."

He goes on further, "Right now we’re comfortable being great. I’m going to make sure that everybody in my program, including myself, is very uncomfortable. Because you only grow in life when you’re uncomfortable. So we are going to break through and become an elite program by doing all the little things."

I have often used sports as a metaphor for leadership (and, for that matter, life in general).  There's a lot to unpack in Franklin's speech.  He gives a great summary of what is necessary for any organization to go from "good to great to elite."  There are only a small number of elite college football teams (Alabama, Clemson, and Ohio State are in the national title hunt year in and year out and are certainly deserving of "elite" status).  Similarly, there are only a small number of elite organizations in the health care industry.  

It takes hard work and commitment to be an elite organization for sure, but I want to draw particular attention to something else that Coach Franklin said.  "You only grow in life when you're uncomfortable."  You go from "Good to Great" by being uncomfortable with the status quo (being just "good").  Similarly, you go from "Great to Elite" by being uncomfortable being great.  It's simple and elegant to summarize, but hard to execute! 

We should focus on being uncomfortable.  That's how we learn.  That's how we improve.  That's how we go from "Good to Great to Elite."