Good to Great by Jim Collins
I recently was finally able to grab a copy of this classic and finish it. It is a great book but I kind of expected that. While there are many counterpoints to why the book isn’t so “Great”, I think overall there is much to learn from the information and examples even if they aren’t as literal as some may like. But hey, its all relative anyway. 
Collins and his team go through a very lengthy and in-depth study and comparison of various companies in order to find out what makes a company go from “Good to Great”. They come up with some pretty interesting results and concepts.
They have many metrics for comparison and judging the companies but what they mainly did was try to find the companies with consistent results, success and growth over at least 15 years and over the general market results. They then found as close to identical comparison companies who had similar size, revenue and circumstances but who were not to jump the chasm from Good to Great.
Companies studied which they considered great include Abbott, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly-Clark, Kroger, Nucor, Philip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, Wells Fargo and a few more. Some of the traits they found in common in all the great companies compared to their “good comparison” companies were:
- Disciplined Leaders who aren’t self-serving
- Using Technology as a accelerator to success
- Not just hiring people, the the RIGHT people for the RIGHT positions
- Promoting a self-motivating, disciplined company culture
- Focusing on what they know they can be great at, they call this “The Hedgehog Concept”
- Being consistent in that focus and created goals based off them
- Having the discipline to look at the brutal facts and be honest with your company
Some of the points individually might seem like common sense but if you take them all and see how they harmonize together it starts to become clear.
So overall a great book, I recommend it though I’m sure many of you already have. Probably something to skim through every once in a while as well. 
.
Posted on September 22, 2007
Filed Under Art & Design, Books Reviews, Business, Business Books, Daily Thoughts, Entertainment, General, Productivity, Quotes, Startup, Tech, Web
Related Posts:
-
Seth Godin speaks at Google about Marketing
Seattle Conference on Scalability Vids up on Google Video
Reboot 8 here I come!
Why Good Programmers are Lazy and Dumb
Mid-Vacation update
Leaving on a jet plane…
Comments
2 Responses to “Good to Great by Jim Collins”
Leave a Reply
-
Projects
-
Search it all
-
About
I'm Marston and here you'll find my rantings, rhetoric and other useful info. I dig tech, photography, quantum physics and organic food. I'm the founder of SugarStats.com and thats my days developing.
-
Flickr
www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from Marston A.. Make your own badge here.
-
Twitter
- Just landed in Amsterdam, oh how I missed my 3G. Back from vacation and all refreshed to get back to work 3 hrs ago
- SS Blog: Diabetic Chinese skiier drops out of life after the olympics…: Wow, This is really sad&#.. http://tinyurl.com/5p5ylt 2 days ago
- Yup, still alive on vacation. Finally found an internet cafe. Almost time to come back to 'civilization', but is that a good thing? 3 days ago
- SS Blog: Drivers License……Insulin Dep…bright red and on the front!!!: I happened to pull out my F.. http://tinyurl.com/6zfzys 4 days ago
- SS Blog: The Lesser of Evils? Side Effects and Diabetes Medications: Dearest Readers, do not use .. http://tinyurl.com/56uwmn 6 days ago
- SS Blog: Nick Jonas and Elliott Yamin…..livin out loud with the D: Recently Elliott and Nick have.. http://tinyurl.com/6r5b6f 1 week ago
- SS Blog: Just spoke to another struggling with costs of diabetes healthcare…and I don’t mean just.. http://tinyurl.com/6pzo7m 1 week ago
- SS Blog: Feeling Fine versus Being Fine–do high glucose numbers matter?: “As long as I feel.. http://tinyurl.com/68hfok 2 weeks ago
- More updates...
Couldn’t agree more. This is an icon and something worth coming back to every now and then. The principles are evergreen. Because there is an unrelenting need for a roadmap and tools for becoming great may I suggest the book Kiss Theory Good Bye. I wrote this to provide people with proven tools and tactics to rapidly increase performance and profit so they can have more time to do the things they love most.
Bob Prosen
CEO
Best Selling Author
Another excellent point that Jim Collins made is that an inner drive for excellent seemed to be innate. For example, the type of compensation package (stocks vs bonus vs salary) was not correlated with success.