Good to Great by Jim Collins

books:


	• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't Jim Collins Collins, 2001 - 300 pages average customer review:based on 678 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good to Great by Jim Collins

I would rate this book as a five star book. It gives the reader different points of view regarding the management of different companies that made the transition from good companies to great companies. The most important subject of the book revolves around the people. In the book, Jim Collins describes how great companies made the transition because they had Great people working for them that understood the Hedgehog concept. Overall, I would really recommend this book to management because it describes how to improve the quality and the performance of your company.

Ismael Favela

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The Power of a Hedgehog

I rarely if ever write reviews, but thought it important to reflect on the impact Good to Great has had on my business consciousness. The real world examples are aspirational and show the impact leaders committed to being the best in their sector can have on the achievement of success. Whilst my use of these concepts does not relate to the management of a multinational blue chip, they are very relevant to my approach to sales within the recruitment business I manage. Recruitment focused on core areas of specialisation and the development of key communities of candidates is very much a driver of success and this is the power of the headhog concept at its most basic level. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

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Good Overview, Great Content

Jim Collins did a great job at analyzing how companies go from Good to Great.

Jim and his staff of researchers were able to compile data on the great companies to compare with the mediocre or weaker companies. This data portrayed very well how simplicity is a key component to great success. The hedgehog concept displays how a simple idea can be useful. Staying away from confusion and too much clutter allows a company to stay focused on what they want to do. Also, finding the right people for the company philosophy makes establishing and maintaining a great company much easier.

The book was a great guideline for transforming average companies into great ones. He also established why reading both books would help in building great companies. He ties the concepts together very well.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to go beyond being satisfied with success alone. Basically, everyone should remember to do what they do best and take control of those opportunities that are made available.

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Good to Great

Jim Collins and his research team have done an extraordinary job! There is a reason why this book has sold way over two million copies and why it was named the #1 Bestseller.
When I first purchased a copy of the book and flipped through the pages, I was a little overwhelmed with all the charts illustrated throughout the text. I thought to myself, "oh no, it's going to be another book where I will be hugging the dictionary and scratching my head!" However, it was nothing that I had predicted. It was so easy to read and comprehend as every chart and figure was carefully explained and simply exemplified.
What I enjoyed most about reading the book was the fact that everything here is common sense, nothing is new. For example, we know that hiring the right people is essential in running a great company and being able to insert them into the right tasks (their strengths) will not only create a better working atmosphere and environment, but establishes a comfort zone and constructs a relationship between management and employee in regards to trust and understanding. Additionally, as in every company, the sooner the company is able to understand, accept, and confront their brutal facts (weaknesses), then the better and stronger the company can become. "Good to great companies faced just as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to that adversity differently." Lastly, knowing and understanding what you are passionate about, what you can be the best in the world at, and getting paid to do just that will help push and drive yourself to become Great, as the motivation is there.
This is all common sense knowledge, and a stroke of genius on how Jim Collins and his research team were able to validate and justify it. They have proven what we know is true and what we know should work with years of research through company comparisons and specific examples.
Overall, this is definitely a book worth purchasing. It provides numerous examples of specific scenarios that reflect the concepts and theory related. And most notably, it is written so simply that a sixth grade student will be able to understand it.

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GREAT!!!

Good to Great is about a research to discover how an ordinary company can make the transition from being good, to achieving breakthrough and becoming great. He begins the book by describing the transition from good to great as a flywheel that consists of 3 stages of discipline with each stage containing 2 key concepts. What's important to understand is that becoming a great company takes time; it is a slow build up process that takes disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action leading to breakthrough. A great company does not become great overnight through a single defining miracle moment, savior, or revolutionary idea.

Jim Collins stresses the idea of Level 5 Leaders and having the right people on the bus, which is crucial to having a great company. These concepts are discussed in the first stage of the process, which really makes one re-evaluate the type of companies that one would want to be associated with. These first two ideas had me questioning my own personal work ethics, abilities, attitude, and overall character, hoping that I can be the right person on the bus and someday evolve into a Level 5 Leader. It takes great people to make a great company, so the question is are you or can you be someone great? The next stage of disciplined thought explains how one must confront the brutal facts of the current reality, you can't overcome obstacles or challenges unless you face them head on and have faith that you will prevail. Once this has been accomplished, a clear understanding of what the company can be the best in the world at, what the people in the company can be deeply passionate about, and what drives the economic engine of the company should be addressed. The intersection of these three ideas is what Collins calls the "hedgehog concept" and is another significant factor in becoming a great company. Without this insight and understanding, the company has no direction or light to follow. This stage is, in my opinion, the most difficult of this process. It is probably where most companies get stuck and are not able to clearly grasp and understand what is their hedgehog concept. The final stage is really just following through and having the discipline to make the right decisions and choices, by creating a "culture of discipline", which completely relies on the establishment of the first two stages. This is the chapter that really brings all the concepts together and how to put it all into action. The idea is not having to manage the people in the system, but rather managing the system itself.

Overall, this book was a very easy and intriguing read. Collins does a great job at keeping the reader interested with the various examples and stories that he incorporates into the ideas that he is trying to get across. He uses a lot of fascinating jargons or statements that really stuck in my mind such as "rinsing your cottage cheese." I believe the ideas that are presented in Good to Great can really open some people eyes and give better understanding of why we sometimes find ourselves dreading the idea of work at one company and excited about going to work at another. On that note, I would highly recommend this book and leave you with a quote from Pablo Picasso, which was used, in the last chapter of the book, "It is your Work in life that is the ultimate seduction."

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

?Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,? comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.?

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

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