Good to Great

l PERSPECTIVE l
    If you ever attend one of our workshops, a saying youʻll hear from us over and over again is, "Good to Great."  It comes from a book of that name by author Jim Collins. In it, Jim and his team studied 28 different companies over a period of 5 years to try and determine the universal characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great. 

    That saying stuck with us and became our unofficial motto in our own classrooms and in our workshops.  But what does it mean?  To us, going from good to great means going that extra step, to put in that extra effort to improve and get better.  Itʻs easy to take the shortcut or easy way out.  Itʻs easy to say to yourself, "Oh, thatʻs good enough."  Whatʻs not easy is to keep pushing yourself, to go back out and reshoot something, or to re-record that voiceover to make your project that much better.  In some cases, a simple re-shoot can mean all the difference between something that is just good, to something that is truly great.  

    If you think about it, anyone can be good at something with a little practice.  You could pick up a ukulele and with some practice, be pretty good at it.  But if you want to be truly great like Jake Shimabukuro (if you donʻt know who he is, look him up on YouTube), that takes extra effort.  That is what we remind our students over and over again.  What can you do to go the extra mile?  
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   We encourage all of our participants, both students and teachers, to bring "Good to Great" into their classrooms as a reminder that we all can do a little better.  We should all strive to put out our very best work and effort into anything we do. ​

Kevin Matsunaga

Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School, Kauai

Check out the book here.