"Good to Great" is any organizations operator's manual for success

books:

	• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't Jim Collins HarperBusiness, 2001 - 300 pages average customer review:based on 804 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Best Business Book on any Shelf

Although Jim Collins' Built to Last was a well researched book with outstanding concepts, Good to Great builds on them so significantly that it truly is a quantum step beyond. Good to Great explores what it takes to really develop a business team which will produce results far and beyond the typical. It puts the burden on the leader in a practical but tough way. As a business leader, this book made me rethink everything I was doing.

Good to Great does two things extremely well. First, all of the points are backed up by data. Just like his first book, the author uses extensive analysis of companies to identify 19 companies that are truly great. Although time has affected some of these, the long-term principles do not. Second, he boils down the principles of leadership and team dynamics to some simple, practical, but lofty targets.

This book defines what can make a great company.

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What is your BHAG?

Sadly, some of the "great" organizations discussed in this publication have since fallen, however this book is still very interesting. BHAG stands for "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" - so what is yours? I thought the Stockholm Paradox was interesting as well. This book is worth your time. - Corinne Isberner

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"Good to Great" is any organizations operator's manual for success

Jim Collins' Good to Great's biggest triumph isn't the pioneering concepts for greatness but how they are presented. Mr. Collins does a superb job laying out his road map to success in a progressive and logical manner. I keep Good to Great close at hand and reference the chapters frequently.

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Fascinating case-studies

This is a fascinating read, presenting 11 case-studies of companies who pulled themselves out of a pending quagmire, while also contrasting each with a 'sister' company in a similar industry that ended up drowning. Note that this book was written way back in 2010, and at the time Circuit City was thriving and is one of the glowing examples in this book. So relevancy may come into question here. Nonetheless, the illustrations of strong corporate cultures are vivid and show an unwavering commitment to productivity. The emphasis on humility in the winning leaders is inspiring. There are accounts of new leaders taking over a sinking ship and executing huge rounds of layoffs based on the goal of 'getting the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off', and as result removing people who have worked at the company for decades and even people who are family members. That takes guts.

I'm sure some of us readers really relish seeing a company like Bethlehem Steel, whose executives had private airplanes which they used even for taking their children to college, and golf club membership where executive rank determined shower priority (page 138), fail miserably. Meanwhile a company like Nucor, which does away with job titles to eliminate the feel of class distinction, soars. This is what the masses love (me included) and that is why this book is such a hit.

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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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