The Hedgehog Concept

In his 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.”

The essence of a Hedgehog Concept is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercising the relentless discipline to say “No thank you” to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test.

The Hedgehog Concept in Social Sectors

• Passion: Understanding what your organization stands for (its core values) and why it exists (its mission or core purpose).
• Best at: Understanding what your organization 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. Time refers to how well you attract people to contribute their efforts. Money refers to sustained cash flow. Brand refers to our well you cultivate a deep well of emotional good will among supporters.

In 1995, officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) found an anonymous note posted on the bulletin board. “We’re not report takers,” the note proclaimed. “We’re the police.” The note testified to the psychological shift when then Police Commissioner William J Bratton inverted the focus from inputs to outputs.

Prior to Bratton, the NYPD assessed itself primarily on input variables such as arrests made, reports taken, cases closed, budgets met rather than on the output variable of reducing crime.

The difference between inputs and outputs is fundamental, yet frequently missed. The comparison of charities often includes ratings based in part on the percentage of budget spent on management, overhead and fundraising. It’s a well intentioned idea, but reflects profound confusion between inputs and outputs. What is the purpose of that charity? Think about it this way: If you rank collegiate athletic departments based on coaching salaries, you’d find that Stanford University has a higher coaching cost structure as a percentage of total expenses than some other Division I schools. Actually Stanford won the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletic Cup for best over all performance for 10 consecutive years, beating out all other major schools, while delivering athlete graduation rates above 80%. To rate Stanford low because it has a higher salary structure than some other schools would miss the main point that Stanford Athletics delivered exceptional performance, defined by the bottom-line outputs of athletic and academic achievement.

OK, but collegiate sports programs and police departments have one giant advantage: you can measure win records and crime rates. But what if your outputs are inherently not measurable? The basic idea is the same: separate inputs from outputs and hold yourself accountable for progress in outputs, even if those outputs defy measurement.