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Summary: Good To Great: The Practicalities, The Principles
Review: To learn about firms that were able to markedly improve their financial performance, I recommend "Good To Great" by James C. Collins. It is a study of leadership, THE PRACTICALITIES, in those firms. If you find "Good To Great" interesting and informative, I recommend that you also read Norman Thomas Remick's "West Point: Character, Leadership, ..." for a study that will give you the leg up of understanding leadership, THE PRINCIPLES, that can be applied to any organization you are now, or will be, leading in your career.
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Summary: Great Book!`
Review: When I was really young, I used to bet the other children that I could swallow loose change. The most I ever did was 78 cents and one of them was a quarter.
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Summary: The best companie book already wrote
Review: Here in Brazil I bought one exemplar, read and bought another 4 to my partners. All of the bookstories has the book on front of the storie to seel. There were the most deep and real research already made about companies. I recommend to everybody I know, I interview, I meet and I'll love to congratulate Jim Collins and his team for this magnificent work.
Jonas Federighi
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Rating: 
Summary: Good but simple; fraught with self-importance
Review: Classic academic approach, which yielded a variety of not-so surprising results. Thankfully, Collins takes many opportunities to lambast corporate over-indulgence and egotistical "leaders". The piece of Level 5 leadership is fantastic and actionable. Anyone surprised by these revelations; however, needs a stronger grounding in reality. My strongest gripe with the book is Collins' pervasive, self-serving narrative. Too much effort is spent justifying (and promoting) his scientific analysis process. Every other page describes "debates among the team, that went on for weeks" with regards to the data. He also falls into the trap of most academics - trying to create the next buzzword - going to the extent of providing Webster-style pronounciation clues for his self-proclaimed acronyms (BHAGs). The book is fraught with catchy, yet silly lexicon: The Hedgehog Concept (also known as focus), Rinsing your Cottage Cheese (also known as details), blah blah blah.
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Summary: Practical Insights into How to Be the Best of its Category
Review: In his richly illustrated Good To Great, the prequel of infamous Built To Last, Jim Collins debunks several myths about how to turn a good (publicly traded) company into a great one. Leaders of great companies are rather humble than flamboyant. Furthermore, these leaders are persistent, disciplined, results-oriented, and entrepreneurial, debunking the myth that they and their companies usually achieve success through luck or sudden breakthroughs. In addition, leaders of great companies first hire and promote disciplined people in thought and action to focus on what be done to succeed. At the same time, they get rid of those who do not fit the bill. Leaders of great companies and their team also pursue their target market with passion, keeping a constant eye on the relevant drivers of their business. They are deeply convinced that they will ultimately prevail. Leaders of great companies and their team indeed act on the brutal facts they are facing with realism and steely determination. They see technology as an accelerator to reach their BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) and not as their creator. Finally, leaders of great companies and their team know how to manage the short-term expectations of Wall Street without losing sight of their long-term goals. Unfortunately, unlike Gerard J. Tellis and Peter N. Golder in Will and Vision, Collins does not emphasize enough the importance of financial commitment and asset leverage for a good company to become and remain a great company. Hopefully, Collins will explore those topics in greater detail in the second edition of Good To Great.
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Summary: "good to great" is neither
Review: Yet another in a seemingly unending cycle of managment "advice" designed to abdicate responsibility from those who are being paid to manage, from managing.
I, personally, have always suspected that about 90 percent of this "advice" emanates from an island off the coast of Maine, where about a dozen of these management "experts" grind out the latest "management du jour" psychobabble, wait for it to be gobbled up, then return to the island and grind out some more, thus perpetuating the cycle.
Anyone who's been employed more than ten years or so has certainly had the misfortune of trying to keep a straight face through at least two or three of these management "revelations." It would be interesting to be able to question these "experts" a year or two after their recommendations have long since been forgotten. Of course, by that time, they're back on the island, grinding out more pap.
If managers weren't either too lazy or too stupid to do the job they're paid to do (manage), it would mercifully exhaust the market for this entire genre of stuff. Too many people in positions of authority, however, seem to blindly accept it is as credibile and people can be adversely affected as a result.
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Summary: BEST business book I've EVER read!
Review: Many business books have highlighted on some of these themes:
1) charismatic leader, 2) overnight success story, 3) a defining moment, initiative, or revelation, 4) visionary technology strategy, 5) B-school buzzwords (such as first-mover advantage) Collins explains that these traits are NOT characteristics of Good-to-Great companies, but rather practices of the laggards. Most authors describe a recent success story, but it usually amounts to nothing more than ego, charisma, opinion, or implementation of the latest fad. Collins, instead, provides references to thousands of pages of documented research to PROVE his point. Collins describes how 11 mediocre companies, across different industries and over various time periods, implemented similar practices to drastically outperform the market and transform themselves into great companies.
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Summary: Reaching Beyond Clever Concepts to Find Real Solutions
Review: Through extensive research and simple analysis Jim Collins uncovers what few business books deliver: real usable business wisdom. Absent are the parables, jargon, and other simplistic linear ideas with little real world applications. What he finds are humble, realistic, but demanding and clear leaders; an emphasis on getting the right people first and the vision second; a unique mixture of focus, discipline, and patience What is equally important is what he does not find: flamboyant media darling executives, extravagant or complicated compensation systems, or reliance on technology as a competitive edge. What he uncovers are real solutions to sustainable growth and success, derived from real companies and histories. Some of the companies came from depressed industries (Nucor and steel), and some came from rapidly changing industries (Wells Fargo and banking), but all shared very common learnable and applicable traits. In his conclusion Collins asserts that going from good to great is less consuming and less painful than wallowing in mediocrity; and "the building of momentum adds more energy into the pool than it takes out." It ultimately gives greater meaning and reward to all of the people associated with the company. It would be hard to find a better reason to read and absorb these ideas.
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Summary: A Fresh Look at Some Old "Truths"
Review: It will debunk many of the commonly accepted principles of what makes a mediocre company great.
Rating:
Summary: Good to Great
Review: Finally a book based on extensive research on why companies are truly excellent in what they do. No fads, no flash in the pans just hard work that's focus on their mission and core business. In my mind a must read for anyone who is tired of mediocrity or the status quo.
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