..."Good is the enemy of great” is the first sentence in Jim Collins book; Good to Great, Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Other Don’t. Jim Collins says, because good is the enemy of great, is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. This book is packed with leading edge thinking, understandable examples, and data to support the conclusions. It is a challenge for CEOs, entrepreneurs and leaders to show evidence of the discipline required to shift their companies from Good to Great. Jim Collins and his research team of 20 compared and contrasted how many companies made the leap to greatness and how other companies didn’t. Based on bundles of evidence and a large quantity of data, he and his team uncovered how the good to great companies like Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo maintained great results and accomplished enduring greatness, evolving into companies that were undeniably “Built to Last”. It’s strange that the research performed showed an opposition of what we had always thought, “People are our most important asset”. Instead the researched showed that the right people are the better people, in other words “First get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus” and then later decide on when and where to drive the bus. Collins plans out three stages, each with two key concepts. These six concepts are the heart of Good to Great...
Words: 948 - Pages: 4
...Good to Great “Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don’t" Harper Business, 2001, New York, NY. Review BySwarup Bose © www.hrfolks.com All Rights Reserved Table of Contents About the Author……………………………………….3 Thesis…………………………………………………...3 Chapter 1. Good is the Enemy of Great……………...4 Chapter 2.Level 5 Leadership………………………..5 Chapter 3. First Who….Then what…………………..6 Chapter 4. Confront the brutal facts…………………7 Chapter 5. Hedgehog Concept………………………9 Chapter 6. Cultural Discipline……………………….10 Chapter 7. Technological Accelerators…………….11 Chapter 8. The Flywheel And the Doom Loop…….12 Chapter 9. From Good To great To built to Last…..14 Learnings from Good to great……………………….15 Critique…………………………………………………16 . © www.hrfolks.com All Rights Reserved About the Author : Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies -- how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies. Having invested over a decade of research into the topic, Jim has co-authored three books, including the classic Built to Last, a fixture on the Business Week bestseller list for s eliminated wasteful luxuries, like executive dining rooms, corporate jets, lavish vacation spots, etc., for the good of the co mpany - to other people, external factors, and good luck. All 11 of the featured companies had this type of leadership, charactmulti-year research projects and works with executives from the private, public...
Words: 8483 - Pages: 34
...established as one of the most influential management consultants, further established his credibility with the wildly popular Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don’t, originally published in 2001. The book went on to be one of the bestsellers in the genre, and it is now widely regarded as a modern classic of management theory. Collins takes up a daunting challenge in the book: identifying and evaluating the factors and variables that allow a small fraction of companies to make the transition from merely good to truly great. ‘Great,’ an admittedly subjective term, is operationally defined according to a number of metrics, including, specifically, financial performance that exceeded the market average by several orders of magnitude over a sustained period of time. Using these criteria, Collins and his research team exhaustively catalogued the business literature, identifying a handful of companies that fulfilled their predetermined criteria for greatness. Then, the defining characteristics that differentiated these ‘great’ firms from their competitors were quantified and analyzed. The resulting data are presented in Good to Great in compelling detail. Over the course of 9 chapters, Collins addresses a number of management, personnel, and operational practices, behaviors, and attitudes that are both conducive and antithetical to the good-to-great transition. One overarching theme that links together virtually all of Collins’ arguments is the need to define a narrowly...
Words: 2117 - Pages: 9
...Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap... And others don’t? Good to Great, published in March 2001 , is actually a narrative presentation of the quest of Jim Collins and his team as they conducted a research study regarding company performance which rooted from a single question: Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how? This seed of question was planted in the mind of Collins when confronted by Bill Meehan that his book “Built to Last”, which was about “how you take a company with great results and turn it into an enduring great company of iconic stature”, is considered useless in the world of business. As pointed out by Meehan, the companies written in Built to Last “never had to turn themselves from good companies into great companies” as they were always great. Challenged, Jim Collins started the five-year research of how a good company can become great. The study of Collins turned out into another breakthrough as it was systematically planned and well-structured; from six long months of search and analyzing financial reports of hundreds or even thousands of companies, identifying which companies made the leap from good results to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years and still taking into account their independence to the industry performance in which they belong, presenting and debating ,debating and debating until they’ve found eleven good-to-great companies to further study. The research, backed up by...
Words: 1330 - Pages: 6
...Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don’t ‘Good things take time, but great things happen all at once.’ – Rat Race. Jim Collins counters criticisms on Built to Last with Good to Great, by unfolding sought-after information on how to turn a company into a great one. ‘Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t’ written by Jim Collins in 2001 is the outcome of a rather ambitious research project. Collins and his team studied 11 companies, chosen out of 1,435 companies, which were able to transform themselves from ‘good’ companies to ‘great’ companies. These 11 companies were included based on at least 15 years of advanced performance. The research demonstrates the course of action that ‘good’ companies take on their journey to becoming ‘great’. Jim Collins began his research as a Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty member. At Stanford University, Collins has degrees in mathematics and business administration, as well as degrees from the University of Colorado and the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado where he continues to perform research and discuss his findings with executives from social and corporate areas. Collins has worked with CEOs in several companies and social sector organizations. He is the author and co-author of five books that revolve around his research including Built to Last, with Jerry I. Porras...
Words: 1737 - Pages: 7
...《Good to Great》—Book Review “Good to Great”, written by Jim Collins, is not only a guide book for company development but also can apply in self-development of every single person. It is mainly about the seven steps to constructing a system to turn a good or even bad company to a great company. I would like to share some feelings about this book with you in the following paragraphs. To start with, when talking about becoming great, there are seven pivotal steps that we must do. Firstly, we need to find the 5 level leadership. Secondly, finding the proper staff is more important than doing the proper things. Thirdly, confronting the brutal reality is also a necessity for being great. Fourthly, we should insisting on hedgehog concept throughout the process. Fifthly, we need to share a culture of discipline in the whole company. Sixthly, using technology as an accelerator when necessary. Seventhly, putting all these disciplines into practical management cyclically then we will make a difference and become great. As to the first step, finding the 5 level leadership, I think this is the key to the whole process. The core of 5 level leadership is to lead the company to gain sustaining development. A 5 level leadership can gain brilliant achievements in his or her duration and also can help construct a system to gain consisting achievements after his or her duration, this is the difference between a 4 level leadership and a 5 level leadership. Therefore, I think putting...
Words: 2355 - Pages: 10
...Book Report Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t (Jim Collins, 1996) In his book “Good to Great” Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" Collins and a devoted team of 22 researchers embarked to discover what transforms good companies into truly great companies. To begin the research for the Good-to-Great study, they searched for companies that: performed at or below the general stock market for at least fifteen years; then at a transition point began to pull away from the competition, and sustained returns of at least 3 times the general market for the next fifteen years. They started with a list of 1,435 companies that appeared on the Fortune 500 list from 1965 to 1995 and ended up with only 11 that made the cut. These eleven companies produced, on average, a return of 6.9 times the general stock market during the 15 years following the transition points. Collins chose a 15-year span to avoid "one-hit wonders" and lucky breaks. The companies that were selected were Abbott Laboratories, Circuit City, Federal Home Loan Mortgage, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo. In the book, Collins highlights some important factors which are the result of the research. Although there are several factors involved for taking a company from good to great', what these great companies turned out to have in common was a particular kind of leader...
Words: 1777 - Pages: 8
...Good to Great Humility +Will=Level By Jim Collins “How on earth did a company with such a long history of being nothing special transform itself into an enterprise that outperformed some of the best led organizations in the world”? Like every other humankind I want to become a better person and not only that but I wanted to be well known and transform myself from good to great. In addition to my dream of thought to become a better leader I found this article to be extremely interesting. Jim Collins has done a wonderful job identifying what it makes for a company to go from good to great. He highlights the very important factors on how to go from good to great. Well, I am sure I learned something from this article on how anyone with enthusiasm can transform a good company to a great company. That is by well managed planning and decisions. However, only few of companies makes it to “Great” To go from good to great is not easy, but if with passion one can find out the core factors which lead to a good company. The model Collins used is to search for the companies that performed at or below the general stock market for at least 15 years, than at a transition point began to pull away from the competition. That sustained returns of at least 3 times the general market for the next 15 years. Collins with a list of 1,435 companies and found eleven that met his criteria. These 11 companies produced, on average, a return of 6.9 times the general stock market during the 15 years following...
Words: 693 - Pages: 3
...Good to Great Book Analysis By Zain Muzammil Jim Collins “Good to Great” sold 3 million copies and became one of the top sellers in its genre. In the book, Collins takes up a daunting challenge in the book: identifying and evaluating the factors and variables that allow a small fraction of companies to make the transition from merely good to truly great. The extensive research conducted by Jim Collins and his team of analysts provides extravagant turnarounds of a few successful companies that were able to turn themselves from merely great to the greatest in the industry. Jim Collins believe that a great companies are always accompanied by “Great Leaders”, and he states them as Level 5 leadership. Great leaders cannot be selfish nor can they let their egoistic nature- from the position- to with-held the success of the company. Rather Jim narrates that they should be humble and modest. Ken Iverson, who lead Nucor’s transformation from bankruptcy to being one of the most successful companies in the world, was reported as being one of the most humble and modest CEO by board member Jim Hlavacek. Another key factor that Collins underscores as a part of Good to Great is the nature of the leadership team. He coins it as “First who and then what”. It is very important for a company to illustrate and reflect on the kind of leadership that a company has. If you have all the right people on the bus who willing to accomplish the unthinkable only then can a company...
Words: 737 - Pages: 3
...GOOD TO GREAT - Good to Great is a fantastic book via the compilation of 15,000 hours of hard work. With the support of a 21 person research team, top graduate students at the University of Colorado, and Executive interviews and follow-ups, these contribution made it possible to bring author, Jim Collin’s, book to life. Throughout these nine chapters, Jim Collin and his teams capture different methodology from a phasing approach such as (The Search, Compared to What, Inside the Black Box,, Chaos to Concept) to such concepts as the Flywheel and the Doom Loop. It’s was through my understanding that I discovered, what I believed, what takes companies from good to great and why are we compelled to try to create that greatness. . As reflected in Chapter 1, the “great” companies of today often endure years of an overwhelming shadow before their great results compel the world to look at them. It is with this perception that often leads many to perceive them as just another company. These leaps into greatness were not a result of massive company upheavals such as a New CEO with new and radical changes. In fact, the mark of a great company comes from result from change that occurs overtime due to the amount of effort, not just to the instant gratification of overnight results with a concept Collins refers to as, 'pushing against the flywheel'. After 5 five-years evaluating of 11 companies, Collin’s was able to distinguish what accounts for the sudden and sustained rise above...
Words: 1138 - Pages: 5
...Travis-1 Professor Dungan DEVW-143 September 23,2008 “It Is Hard To Make Time out To Study And Learn when you been out Of School so long.” Once you have been out of school for a long time it’s harder to learn and make the time to study. You have to discipline yourself and make time to study and spend time with your family. Unlike when you live at home with your parents, you have more responsibilities and outside influences that prevent you from studying. In most cases studying has to take the back burner. Because I’ve been out of school so long, it feels like I’m starting from scratch. Some of the basic things in education I have forgotten. I’m often looking up words and having my wife read my papers and give me her opinion. This takes up a lot of time because I have to take two steps backwards to get one step forward. My son also makes it hard for me to study. Don’t get me wrong, he comes before school, but school is also my obligation. He’s five years old and demands a lot of my attention. It seems he wants attention while I’m studying. So, I try to wait until after he goes to bed before I start studying. Sometimes in the process of putting him to bed, I fall asleep myself. While I’m at work, during lunch I try to read in my car. I have a co-worker that always likes to interrupt me. I try to give him a hint by saying “I sure do have a lot of homework to do”. But he never gets the clue and before you know it lunch is over. During...
Words: 333 - Pages: 2
...common halo effects is the judgment that a good looking person is intelligent and amiable. There is also a reverse halo effect whereby perception of a negative or undesirable trait in individuals, brands, or other things influences further negative judgments about the traits of that individual, brand, etc. If a person "looks evil" or "looks guilty" you may judge anything he says or does with suspicion; eventually you may feel confident that you have confirmed your first impression with solid evidence when, in fact, your evidence is completely tainted and conditioned by your first impression. The hope that the halo effect will influence a judge or jury is one reason some criminal lawyers might like their clients to be clean-shaven and dressed neatly when they appear at trial. The phrase was coined by psychologist Edward Thorndike in 1920 to describe the way commanding officers rated their soldiers. He found that officers usually judged their men as being either good or bad "right across the board. There was little mixing of traits; few people were said to be good in one respect but bad in another."* The old saying that first impressions make lasting impressions is at the heart of the halo effect. If a soldier made a good (or bad) first impression on his commanding officer, that impression would influence the officer's judgment of future behavior. It is very unlikely that given a group of soldiers every one of them would be totally good or totally bad at everything, but the evaluations...
Words: 2915 - Pages: 12
...[22:02:48] simas: Goal 1 [22:02:51] simas: Goal 2 [22:02:55] simas: and Goal 3 [22:02:59] simas: :) by eli goldratt [22:03:13] simas: than [22:03:17] simas: The choice [22:03:20] simas: by the same author [22:03:25] simas: :) a bit much harder [22:03:26] simas: read [22:03:35] simas: actually not an easy [22:03:36] simas: way [22:03:43] simas: read [22:03:47] simas: not way [22:03:56] simas: but still interesting [22:04:15] simas: Funky business [22:04:21] simas: i think there are 2 books [22:04:23] simas: funky business [22:04:26] simas: and funky business 2 [22:04:27] simas: :D [22:04:40] simas: han how to clone a blonde i think its called this way [22:04:45] simas: tipping oint [22:04:47] simas: point [22:05:05] Lusya: oki doki, these all sounds grrrreat! [22:05:22] simas: Who moved my chease [22:05:25] simas: ? [22:05:41] simas: Than [22:06:02] simas: Purple cow [22:06:03] Lusya: you read all of the above?! [22:06:07] simas: yeah [22:06:13] simas: maybe 1 or 2 books i havent [22:06:22] simas: dont remmber need to re read [22:06:24] simas: :D [22:06:29] Lusya: wow [22:06:45] Lusya: book possessed u r lol [22:06:54] simas: I read them during the years [22:06:55] simas: :)) [22:06:59] simas: soo not all now [22:07:00] simas: :)) [22:07:02] simas: but yeah [22:07:05] simas: let me se there are more [22:07:15] Lusya: very well done man, no seriously [22:11:41] simas: Now [22:11:42] simas: a [22:11:46] simas: list of books i did not read ...
Words: 700 - Pages: 3
...Good Seafood, Great Health OUTLINE Claim: Doctors and chefs agree seafood tastes great; seafood is a very healthy food source and the supply is plentiful. Antithesis: When stored or prepared incorrectly, seafood can be deadly. I. Nutritional and Health facts A. Types of fish and cholesterol B. Low-Density Lipoprotein(LDL) and High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL) C. Seafood diets and long life II. Ways to consume and prepare healthy seafood A. Raw B. Baked / Broiled C. Boiled D. Grilling E. Fried F. Processing III. Types of seafood A. Scaled fish B. Shell C. Fresh water D. Thick and thin skinned IV. Sources of seafood A. Oceans, bays and gulfs B. Rivers, lakes and ponds C. Wild and farm raised Seafood is by far the ultimate choice when it comes to the combination of taste and health. On the nutrition scene, seafood has minimal Low-Density Lipoprotein (LDL or bad cholesterol) and is stacked with High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL or good cholesterol). Scientists have found a diet high in seafood consumption leads to longer life expectancy. As for taste, seafood contains a plethora of choices when it comes to variety and preparation (“Tips for preparing Seafood”). Seafood is caught or farmed all over the world in ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, seas and oceans. Without a doubt doctors and chefs agree seafood tastes great; seafood is a very healthy food source and the supply is plentiful. Doctors at the world renowned...
Words: 2015 - Pages: 9
...My takeaways: It is all about the people! It is important to focus on WHO is on the team versus the obstacles of changing with time and the product. In Good to Great, I got a huge understanding of how leaders are measurable in levels and I used this to compare my level I feel I am currently. Of course, my goal is to be a level 5 leader, however, I find this goal to be a continuing goal as there is always ways to grow and learn every day. I love how Jim Collins learned upfront it is not the good that wins, it’s how you perform with greatness and the choices you make every day that determines how great you’ll become and stay great! He reference a lot of companies we still know today and compared them to good companies to on the decline to bad,...
Words: 263 - Pages: 2
