Good to Great

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of what makes successful firms tick, as well as a Socratic counselor to business and social sector leaders. He has spent more than a quarter-century conducting rigorous research and has produced or coauthored six books, which have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. Good to Great, Built to Last, How the Mighty Fall, and Great by Choice are among them.

Built to Last, the seminal management study of the 1990s, demonstrated how great firms triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be integrated into an enterprise's DNA from the start.

But what about the corporation that was not born with stellar genetics? How can good, middling, or even disastrous companies reach long-term greatness?

This question plagued Jim Collins' mind for years. Is it possible for a company to defy gravity and transform long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And, if true, what are the universal defining features that propel a company from good to great?

Collins and his research team found a group of exceptional organizations that made the leap to great outcomes and maintained those accomplishments for at least fifteen years using challenging benchmarks. How fantastic? Following the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that outperformed the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, outperforming a composite index of the world's greatest companies, which included Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The research team compared the good-to-great companies against a carefully chosen collection of comparative companies that did not make the transition from good to outstanding. What was different this time? Why did one group of companies become truly exceptional performers while the other group stayed mediocre?

The team spent five years researching the history of all twenty-eight companies in the study. Collins and his team discovered the key determinants of greatness after sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews. They discovered why some companies make the leap and others don't.

Many readers will be surprised by the Good to Great study's findings, which will shed light on practically every aspect of management strategy and practice. Among the findings are:

• Level 5 Leaders: When the research team discovered the type of leadership required to reach greatness, they were astounded.
• The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To progress from excellent to great, one must overcome the curse of expertise.
• A Disciplined Culture: When you combine a disciplined culture with an entrepreneurial mentality, you obtain the magical alchemy of excellent outcomes. Accelerators of Technology: Good-to-great companies have a different perspective on the importance of technology.
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who embark on major reform programs and traumatic restructurings are practically destined to fail.

Author: Jim Collins

Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996/

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