Good to Great - Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't

by Jim Collins

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study (of companies that make the leap from good to great and stay there) fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

I love books that take conventional wisdom and turn it on its head. And this book, while focused on business, offers fabulous lessons for organizations of any kind. Jim Collins says about himself “We all have a strength or two in life , and I suppose mine is the ability to take a lump of unorganized information, see patterns, and extract order form the mess – to go from chaos to concept.” He and his team spent five years doing just that - and the result is a unprecedented understanding of the inner workings of good to great.

Here’s a very quick summary of the characteristics they found in companies that had made the leap from good to great:

Level 5 Leadership

“We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one. Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy – these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”

First Who . . . Then What

“We expected the good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then figured out where to drive it.” The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.

Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)

“We learned that a former prisoner of war had more to teach us about what it takes to find a path to greatness than most books on corporate strategy. Every good-to-great company embraced what we came to call the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity Within Three Circles)

“To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. Just because something is your core business – just because you’ve been doing it for years or perhaps decades – does not necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. And if you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business can’t form the basis of a great company. It must be replaced with a simple concept that reflects deep understanding of three intersecting circles: what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be the best in the world at and what drives your economic engine.”

A Culture of Discipline

“All companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but few companies have a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.”

Technology Accelerators

“Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. They never use technology as the primary means of igniting a transformation. Yet, paradoxically, they are pioneers in the application of carefully selected technologies. We learned that technology by itself is never a primary, root cause of either greatness or decline.”

The Flywheel and the Doom

Loop

“Those who launch revolutions, dramatic change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap from good to great. No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembled relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.”

If you're interested, read  this Fast Company interview with author Jim Collins. It’s a great overview of the book:

Comments

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so good!

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