The Road Less Travelled

Destination Success? 

Try the Road Less Travelled

Ever thought about where you're going? Is your destination success? This article combines a classic motivational poem with the priceless advice of best-selling author Jim Collins. In his book: "Good to Great", Collins convincingly examined what it was that turned good companies into greats. A basic tenet of his book was "first who ... then what". For these companies, one of the first steps in changing from good to great was to take a road less travelled.

When Collins and his team started their research project they expected to find that "the first step in taking a company from good to great would be to set a new direction, a new vision and strategy for the company, and then to get people committed and aligned behind the new direction." However, the leaders of these great companies chose a different path.

What did Collins' successful business leaders do differently? Collins' favorite analogy was that of driving a business like a bus, but one without a particular destination on display. Instead, we imagine the bus with a sign saying simply - "Destination: Success". On this bus, the driver hasn't decided on a destination then recruited the crew.

On Collins' bus, the first decision is who, not where. "... first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, then figure where to drive the bus." Once on the bus, the right people together would work out how to "take it someplace great."

The power of taking a road less travelled is captured in a famous poem by Robert Frost: The Road Not Taken. Although it’s possible to interpret the poem in different ways, the most popular interpretation is that it encourages non-conformity.

It epitomizes the value of setting off in new directions, taking a direction that others may not have journeyed. Choosing a different path. Maybe destination success!

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost