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?

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards

Customer Rating:
Summary: Theory vs Reality
Comment: The research behind this book is impressive and the theories are engaging. On the whole, it's well written and it all makes good sense. Most of these firms have done well over time, while some have not (e.g., Fannie May, Circuit City). What Good to Great does not cover is the role of serendipity and changing market conditions. Nor does it focus on customers. You may want to check out Firms of Endearment for another perceptive.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Proven Principles of Success, for Big Companies, Small Start-Ups, and Even Families
Comment: Jim Collins' classic book on creating a great company contains success principles that apply to big corporations, small clubs, and even families.

* Level 5 Leadership (Leaders with humility and strength, but no ego)
* First Who, Then What (Get the right people first before deciding the direction)
* Confront the Brutal Facts (Create systems to face reality)
* Hedgehog Concept (Focus on One Big Thing that Unites Everything Else)
* Building Your Company's Vision (Focus on the Core Ideology and Envisioned Future)

There are so many profound truths in this simple, yet well-researched, book. Two insights that changed my life are those of "Level 5 Leadership," and "First Who, Then What."

We tend to get caught up in the charismatic, egotistical leaders that seem larger than life. Yet, these leaders' success often starts and ends with their involvement. Their legacies do not continue without them since everything depended on them. This was a big shift in the way I thought and acted. In the past, I was focused on doing everything my way. Now, I'm focused on scalable systems and replicable recipes that can grow my dreams, even without me. While you will always influence your company's culture, it is vital to create an organization that will always thrive, with or without you.

There's a saying in venture capital that we should bet on the jockey, not on the horse. All the best laid plans are doomed to failure without the proper people who can execute on them. Everything in our lives depends on our relationships and networks. We should build those first before we build the imaginary theories and plans. You must have a sense of the direction and the strategy BEFORE you go out and make your team, but your team ultimately matters even more than your plans. Your team decides how those dreams become reality.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: For hiring managers, and those looking for leaders
Comment: Jim Collins and his team of researchers have surveyed over 1,400 companies, systematically analysed 6,000 publicly available articles, and carried out numerous face to face interviews with senior managers. The finding, the single most important factor to the health of a company - Leadership. The author asserted that they purposely steer away from such attribute as there are no shortage of business books paying the same platitude.

Every company vision statement reads like the next one. When did anyone last read a company which doesn't claim its employee is its greatest asset ? Yet, most see it fit to outsource its most critical function - finding the "right people". If every great company gets it right, there wouldn't be much of a recruitment industry. Recruitment agents will becomes redundant. It is the responsibility of every employee to find the right co-workers. Wait, isn't Google doing exactly that ? Jack Welch, John Chambers, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have all said their main job was to find the right people. Hire the right people first, then create a position to suit the person. Find passionate people, find people with integrity, find someone who would run the company like he/she owns it, hire this person straight away. This is how the author puts it,

"Widen your definition of "right people" to focus more on the character attributes of the person and less on specialised knowledge. People can learn skills and acquire knowledge, but they can not learn the essential characters traits that make them right for your organisation."

Since the publication of Good to Great it has attracted some criticism, primarily for its selection of what's on the Great company list. Much of the companies have since fallen on hard time, a few short years after its publication. Those views are some what misplaced. Good to Great doesn't give investment advice. It study the companies and the people that runs them, and dismissed a few myths along the way. Great leaders are often media shy, less worry about management "buy in" and much prefer hearing the truth, and definitely less charismatic than the media like to portray. A CEO should be working for the good of the company, and less about building his/her own personal profile. The big personality, the management superstar, the hyper arrogant (often misunderstood as self confidence) work against an environment in which employee are encouraged to take calculated risks, and find innovative solutions.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: "Good to Great" an exceptional leadership reference
Comment: "Good to Great" is an exceptional analytical review, focused on leadership, documenting the attributes of leaders of enduring great companies. The text effectively differentiates the leadership attributes of great companies from enduring great companies.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A good look at what companies can do to manage talent
Comment: Stock findings aside, this book has good talent management strategies, including getting the right people on the bus and making sure everyone is going towards the same goal. Nothing revolutionary, but still helpful. I also found the monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great helpful in the non profit arena.

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