What is a Hedgehog?

Strategic planning is an opportunity for organizations and their teams to get clear about what they want to achieve and how to achieve it. Developed by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, a hedgehog concept allows an organization to clearly identify and focus on what they do best.

“Hedgehogs simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything… For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog ideas holds no relevance…they see what is essential and ignore the rest.”

The Three Tenets of Jim Collins’ Hedgehog Concept

Passion

• Understanding what your program stands for (its core values) and why it exists (its mission or core purpose)
• Its not stimulating passion but discovering what makes you passionate!

What are you best in the world at?

(and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at)

• Understanding what your program can uniquely contribute to the people it touches, better than any other organization on the planet

Resource Engine

• Understanding what best drives your resource engine, broken into three parts: time, money and brand

The critical step in the hedgehog concept is to determine how best to connect all three circles, so that they reinforce each other. You must be able to answer the question, “How does focusing on what we can do best tie directly to our resource engine, and how does our resource engine directly reinforce what we can do best?” and you must be right.

M E Clarke Consulting’s Hedgehog

What are we deeply PASSIONATE about?

Transforming the world.  Bringing Healing.

At what are we BEST IN THE WORLD?

Emergence: co-creating, people centered.

What drives our RESOURCE ENGINE?

Working at the intersection of Culture and Strategy.

What is Your Hedgehog?

We help organizations create their Hedgehog by working together to identify their unique contribution, purpose, and economic/resource engine. Once these are identified, all of the organization’s decisions should drive at the center of these three tenets. Contact us or schedule an exploratory call with us to get started.

“Those who have the discipline to attract and channel resources directed solely at their Hedgehog Concept, and to reject resources that drive them away from the center of their three circles, will be of greater service to the world.” — Jim Collins