Hedgehog or Fox?

Personal Effectiveness

Hedgehog or Fox?
By Bob Moore, CMC, MCC, The Effectiveness Coach®

Word Count: 285 words.
Reading Time: Less than 3 minutes

In his famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon an ancient Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

As a NC farm boy, I don’t recall ever coming across a hedgehog. I missed a valuable life lesson of doing one thing well and attempted to master many interests.

Jim Collins’ best-selling book, Good to Great, provided my first in-depth awareness of the hedgehog concept. He tells about Princeton professor Marvin Bressler pointing out the power of the hedgehog during one of their long conversations: “You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.”

A few examples include Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it.

The challenges of the current economy are forcing many executives and professionals to become clear on what can and cannot be accomplished with limited resources. The late Peter Drucker often asked, “Which of your current businesses would you not enter if you were making a blank-page decision about it today?”

How many projects or ideas would you stop based on your answer to Drucker’s question and the three good to great questions found in Collins’ book?

1. What are you most passionate about; really passionate, not just curious about?
2. What could you be best in the world at?
3. What drives your economic engine?

Do you want to be a highly successful hedgehog that makes a major impact or continue to be a frustrated smart fox just dabbling? I invite you to join me and other list makers in the process of off-loading projects, parking good ideas on the back burner and focusing on making the shift from good to great. Are you ready to “pull the plug” on distracting ideas or unproductive projects? What about shutting down your “Pontiac” brand as GM is doing? Begin by asking, “How will this choice lead to achieving my highest priority?

Enthusiastically,

Bob

Bob Moore, CMC®, President
Effectiveness, Inc/The Effectiveness Coach®
Aligning Human Capital with Strategic Objectives

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