Rating: 
Summary: Rinsing You Cottage Cheese
Review: Anyone who owns a company and has people working for them will benefit greatly from reading this title and applying it to their everday life. It contains some very powerful and useful concepts that anyone can apply. It's well written and an easy read!
Rating: 
Summary: Data-mining Project
Review: I gained little from reading this book. The data mining exercise that Jim Collins put his team through yielded few surprising results, and whatever useful lessons that can be drawn from the exercise can be summarised in 10 pages. But Collins had to write a book about it!
Rating:
Summary: Wow, what a genius's work!
Review: Did you watch "Charlie Rose" interviewing Jim Collins on PBS? What a genius and mentor Jim Collins is! I only regret that I may be too old to attend his wonderful class and only wishing him to live as what he predicted on the show, up to 90 years, 50 more wonderful years for the best students in America to appreciate his brain and mind rewiring projects. And God Bless.
Rating: 
Summary: deep quackery
Review: Desperately thrashing around for insights, Jim Collins commits every sin of disinformation--misapplying metaphors, falling prey to fallacies of composition, insisting correlations are causalities, and, in general, becoming so entranced with hindsights that he fails to notice the utter uselessness of his ideas. His lessons have no predictive value or management currency whatsoever.This is deep, deep quackery, a Who Moved My Cheese for people who spend all day in meetings trading consultantspeak, thinking they're working ("adding value"). For all its self-congratulation, Good to Great never moves beyond that old marketing joke--if it worked, then in retrospect, it was a good idea. In a few years, Jim Collins will be every bit the joke that Tom Peters is today. Run, don't walk from this book.
Rating: 
Summary: UW-Milwaukee group 6 Good to Great
Review: Jim Collins asked the question, could a company make the leap from good to great? If yes, is there something that these companies have in common? Do the companies that continue to linger in mediocrity have anything in common?
After 5 years of research Good to Great reveals some surprising results and principles that companies and individuals can apply to change their lives and corporations future. From a list of 1,435 companies 11 made the cut as making the transition from good to great. The research set criteria that a corporation had to have 15 years of sustained average/good results followed by a transition and 15 years of stock growth at least 3 times the average market performance.
The eleven companies are not known as Wall Street superstars but they all have something in common. Perhaps there quiet leadership and focus is why they are not the number 1 held stock in individual stock portfolios. Jim Collins points out several easy to grasp principles and correlations among the 11 good to great companies. Corporations that made the leap to greatness all followed the coined phrase of getting the right people on the bus first. He meant that before the company begins its journey it should have the correct employees on the bus. This could mean removing several existing employees bringing on new staff and then rearranging them into the correct seats. With this theory in practice corporate leadership can lead the bus in any direction. Good to Great introduces Level 5 leadership. All 11 companies had a Level 5 CEO. They possess certain characteristics such as being shy, humble but intensely focused on their job and putting the company above their own personal attention. The themes that are stressed during the book are easy to understand and retain. The implications of the research state that even though the principles seem simple there is no quick fix to getting the right people on the bus or achieving Level 5 leadership qualities. The Hedgehog principle of focusing on your core business and knowing that very well sounds simple but companies fail every year because they move outside their core competencies and lose their focus. We would recommend this book to executives, CEOs, and students. The book gives a focused view of success based on proven results.
Rating:
Summary: A Well Researched Insight!
Review: This book is easy to read and well researched. There is much to glean from its many words of business wisdom, which should be taken as a general guide to good business practices that ensure great, not just good success. Having worked for many years in high-tech companies, I particularly agree with the authors that several factors can be detrimental to attaining greatness. They are: Excessive restructuring and reorganizing, retaining egotistical, bombastic CEO's, a culture of promoting the ignorant, yet visually appealing managers etc. However, it is very true that placing the right, i.e. knowledgeable and disciplined people in the right positions is of utomost importance. These conclusions hit the nail on the head! If you would like to read about these wise findings in a different light, such as the warning signals of imminent failure, and have a good laugh at the same time, then I would also highly recommend the business/humor/satire, MANAGEMENT BY VICE by C.B. Don. In it you shall see some real-life examples of how a good company can undermine its successes and stumble on the road to greatness with rotten management practices, a self-serving CEO, desperate reorganizations...do read the "Reorganization Pill" and "Power Look"...and many more such exposes. Once I had read both these books, I personally felt I had a superbly well-rounded perspective on how a company can soar from good to great and what pitfalls to watch out for!
Rating:
Summary: practical and to the point
Review: The ideas are not necessary new, but the research lends credibility. For me persoanlly, many of the tactics are ones we have utilized successfully for years and we firmly beleive work. The book was reinforcemnt to continue. For the tactics that are new to us, we are planning to adopt. We find ourselves asking the questions posed in the book such as "do you really want them on the bus?"
The book is easy to read and understand.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book about Business Ever
Review: Jim Collins' two books, Built to Last and Good to Great, provide the clearest and most profound analysis of business success. If you never read any other books about business in your life read these two. They are life transforming. I buy these books and give them away as presents. You could wish for no better gift if you are interested in business and what defines success. The new updated chapter on Built to Flip in Built to Last is priceless.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best business books you can read
Review: I've previously read Build to Last, but this book is far more essential to creating a successful company. And anyone who's read the marketing books by Al Ries and Jack Trout will see much of what they teach reflected in Jim's Good to Great. Especially Focus, by Al Ries, which mirrors the all-important "hedgehog" principle in Good to Great -- pick one thing and put the whole company behind it, shedding off all parts that do not add to the main goal of the company. The "Level 5" leadership concept is truly this books biggest break-through, as I've not seen it discussed by anyone else. If your company doesn't have a Leve 5 leader, you're probably fighting a losing battle if industry leadership is your goal.
Rating:
Summary: A superb book
Review: This book is for companies that truly wish to be excellent, and are willing to do all that it takes to get there. A little tough for startups, as this book assumes a base of resources to go off and do what it takes to "get great" - but some of the basic concepts in the book are applicable to ANY business. The first book by the author "Built to Last" was a good book - but he himself has gone great with this one. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
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