I have to admit that I was already a fan of Collins’ quantitative style blended with clever insight, but this was the first time that I had seen him in person, and he was just spectacular. He has a vivid, animated way of telling a story, and had a great sense of humor. This combination of presentation skill was put to immediate use with his first statement drawing a hearty laugh from the audience full of entrepreneurs.

“How many of you in the room are constitutionally unemployable?”

Much of his remaining presentation provided interesting stories and insight from the research that he has done to understand the make-up of exceptional companies.

As Jim said, he has spent years studying the contrast between average companies and exceptional companies. They faced the same set of variables… similar economic conditions, similar competition for top human resources, and a similar set of huge unknowns.

What is the single biggest element of difference?

Not a function of the cards you are dealt, or circumstance… it is conscious choice and discipline.

Jim’s key principles & disciplines that have come from the studies we have worked on:

1. Building greatness is a cumulative never ending process! The idea that no matter how exceptional, you are always only relatively as good as to what you can do next.
2. Most overnight successes are 20 years in the making…. Wal-mart  took 13 years to get to 125 stores. Starbucks required 17 years to get to 38 stores.

“If you start to break Packard’s law, and there are very few laws of business, it is like breaking a law of physics for building great companies.” - David Packard (Co-founder of HP)

If you allow growth to exceed your ability to get enough of the right people to fill the key seats to execute on the growth brilliantly, you will fall as surely as a stone dropped from your hand. This is one of those timeless truths that extends beyond technology and economics.

The number one constraint on growth and sustained success…

An ability to get enough of the right people in the key seats to achieve that sustained growth.

The discipline that WHO comes before WHAT. Collins always kept coming back to the “who” thing over and over again. He said, “The more turbulent the world, (given the great current economic uncertainty of our financial system) the more important this issue is.”

A question from the audience came near the end of his session… How do you figure out who are the right people to put in key seats on the bus?

Collins responded with “Given that I stand here amidst a room full of unmotivated people… the right people are self motivated, self disciplined, self managed, The task is not to motivate unmotivated people, the task is not to have to manage people… self motivated, figured it out from there… self motivated people don’t need tons of management … when you have to start managing, you know that you have the wrong person at the task.”

Final thoughts:

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness is a function of conscious choice and discipline. It is not a matter of circumstance, it is one of choices.

I believe that every one of the Inc. 500 companies that I met at this conference achieved the list because they did not embrace the status quo. Incredible passion, an unwillingness to accept failure and an excessive and compulsive willingness to solve customer’s problems were key ingredients in the business building formula for the entrepreneurs that were at the conference.

I am not sure what it is with Richard Stiennon.  Maybe his mom beat him with a NAC stick when he was young.  Hence his Jack Nicholson looks (more like the Joker in Batman, than Col Jessep in A Few Good Men) and his total disdain for NAC.  In any event Richard never seems to miss a chance to take a pot shot at NAC.  I have fired back and debated him many times on this.  In fact I am convinced that Richard's problem with NAC is that like Uncle Joe, he is just moving a little slow.  Richard still thinks of NAC as Cisco???s network admission control, circa Dec ???03.  He has not gotten up to speed on anything happening with NAC since.  Richard is going to debate NAC with Joel Snyder according to this article by Tim Greene today. My prediction is Snyder by a knockout in 3 rounds or less.

Richard???s latest NAC knock comes on a comment to an excellent article by the Hoff.  Chris takes a bold stand for someone working for a vendor and calls BS on the whole analyst thing (I will write more about that later in this article). Richard being an ex-analyst himself (lets face it, with Richard you can take the man out of the analyst job, but you can???t take the analyst out of the man), takes exception to Hoff???s ???whining??? (Richards words, not mine) and tries to tell Hoff that giving up is not the answer and the way to show up analysts, is to prove them wrong.  Great Richard you try to prove them wrong, when because of what they report you don???t have a market, can???t get any capital and have no visibility.  I guess that is when it is time to move on to the next gig, right? Then Richard has a bad NAC deja vu and feels it necessary to write this:

???Look how easy it is to one up the analyst firms, who as near as I can tell support Network Admission Control universally. Everyone except the folks at Updata Ventures know how seriously flawed NAC is with only one viable market, edu.???

I assume Richard is referring to Updata recently leading the Bradford Networks VC round. But more importantly Richard it is time to call a code red on you and give you the cold hard truth.  Richard the fact is that the edu market is not the only viable market for NAC.  In fact, one of the biggest customers of NAC is the DoD.  That is right Richard at least 3 of the 4 armed forces use NAC in helping to secure their networks. To paraphrase my friend Col Jessep - Richard, you want the truth, you can???t handle the truth!  You sleep securely under the blanket of protection that NAC provides.  If it is good enough to help ???clean the sand??? out of laptops coming home from SWA (that is SouthWest Asia, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, in case you don???t know Richard), it should be good enough for you. Think about that next time you are about to bad mouth NAC.

Let me give you some other truths you may not like Richard.  Why do you think every switch vendor (of which we partner with many of them) is lining up and bringing out NAC solutions?  Why has Microsoft put such a big push on NAP?  Why despite the Luddites like you does NAC still draw crowds at conferences like Interop (ask Joel about that).  Richard we are still signing new major OEM partners.  I am afraid you are the one sadly out of touch on this one Richard.  Just as you are out of touch in missing Hoff???s point in his article.

As to Hoff???s article, as I said I give Chris credit for speaking his mind. I spend an ungodly amount of my time speaking with analysts and trying to ???learn??? from them while at the same time trying to educate them.  I am constantly amazed that so many analysts (and press for that matter) just take a vendors word as gospel. I have seen research reports from analysts big and small, that I am sure did not have any more research done than calling a handful of vendors and listening to their spiel. Too many of these vendors if they do speak to customers, base their findings on such a small sample that it is impossible to have an accurate picture.

Personally, like Hoff says, who watches the watchers is the truth. I would like to see a code of conduct among analysts. I would start by dictating that vendors cannot pay analysts.  Take the payola out of the equation the way they did to the DJ/Radio business in the late 50s. Next analyst reports have to come with metrics to back up the findings. I want to know how many customers they spoke to, how big they were, how they were found, etc.  A vendor giving an analyst a real live???pet??? customer is not real research. I want to know if the customer pays the analyst. It is a dirty business.

Hey let me be clear, I play the game as well as the next guy.  But I agree with Hoff we need to clean up the rules to make the whole analyst thing more fair, viable and valuable.

I am not sure what it is with Richard Stiennon.  Maybe his mom beat him with a NAC stick when he was young.  Hence his Jack Nicholson looks (more like the Joker in Batman, than Col Jessep in A Few Good Men) and his total disdain for NAC.  In any event Richard never seems to miss a chance to take a pot shot at NAC.  I have fired back and debated him many times on this.  In fact I am convinced that Richard's problem with NAC is that like Uncle Joe, he is just moving a little slow.  Richard still thinks of NAC as Cisco’s network admission control, circa Dec ‘03.  He has not gotten up to speed on anything happening with NAC since.  Richard is going to debate NAC with Joel Snyder according to this article by Tim Greene today. My prediction is Snyder by a knockout in 3 rounds or less.

Richard’s latest NAC knock comes on a comment to an excellent article by the Hoff.  Chris takes a bold stand for someone working for a vendor and calls BS on the whole analyst thing (I will write more about that later in this article). Richard being an ex-analyst himself (lets face it, with Richard you can take the man out of the analyst job, but you can’t take the analyst out of the man), takes exception to Hoff’s “whining” (Richards words, not mine) and tries to tell Hoff that giving up is not the answer and the way to show up analysts, is to prove them wrong.  Great Richard you try to prove them wrong, when because of what they report you don’t have a market, can’t get any capital and have no visibility.  I guess that is when it is time to move on to the next gig, right? Then Richard has a bad NAC deja vu and feels it necessary to write this:

“Look how easy it is to one up the analyst firms, who as near as I can tell support Network Admission Control universally. Everyone except the folks at Updata Ventures know how seriously flawed NAC is with only one viable market, edu.”

I assume Richard is referring to Updata recently leading the Bradford Networks VC round. But more importantly Richard it is time to call a code red on you and give you the cold hard truth.  Richard the fact is that the edu market is not the only viable market for NAC.  In fact, one of the biggest customers of NAC is the DoD.  That is right Richard at least 3 of the 4 armed forces use NAC in helping to secure their networks. To paraphrase my friend Col Jessep - Richard, you want the truth, you can’t handle the truth!  You sleep securely under the blanket of protection that NAC provides.  If it is good enough to help “clean the sand” out of laptops coming home from SWA (that is SouthWest Asia, like in Iraq and Afghanistan, in case you don’t know Richard), it should be good enough for you. Think about that next time you are about to bad mouth NAC.

Let me give you some other truths you may not like Richard.  Why do you think every switch vendor (of which we partner with many of them) is lining up and bringing out NAC solutions?  Why has Microsoft put such a big push on NAP?  Why despite the Luddites like you does NAC still draw crowds at conferences like Interop (ask Joel about that).  Richard we are still signing new major OEM partners.  I am afraid you are the one sadly out of touch on this one Richard.  Just as you are out of touch in missing Hoff’s point in his article.

As to Hoff’s article, as I said I give Chris credit for speaking his mind. I spend an ungodly amount of my time speaking with analysts and trying to “learn” from them while at the same time trying to educate them.  I am constantly amazed that so many analysts (and press for that matter) just take a vendors word as gospel. I have seen research reports from analysts big and small, that I am sure did not have any more research done than calling a handful of vendors and listening to their spiel. Too many of these vendors if they do speak to customers, base their findings on such a small sample that it is impossible to have an accurate picture.

Personally, like Hoff says, who watches the watchers is the truth. I would like to see a code of conduct among analysts. I would start by dictating that vendors cannot pay analysts.  Take the payola out of the equation the way they did to the DJ/Radio business in the late 50s. Next analyst reports have to come with metrics to back up the findings. I want to know how many customers they spoke to, how big they were, how they were found, etc.  A vendor giving an analyst a real live“pet” customer is not real research. I want to know if the customer pays the analyst. It is a dirty business.

Hey let me be clear, I play the game as well as the next guy.  But I agree with Hoff we need to clean up the rules to make the whole analyst thing more fair, viable and valuable.