Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Rating:
Summary: One of the best business books I ever read.
Review: I've read many books on the subject of business, and this is easily among the best I ever came across. Collins and his team made a valuable contribution to the business community by researching the reasons why some companies are able to get out of the 'good' territory and into the 'great' territory. The findings are not just abstract conclusions, but rather specific ones supported by empirical data. We all read business books that claim to have methods for improving productivity or motivation or whatever, and finished them without really gaining anything new. Well this isnt one of those books. The information is supported by numerous examples that one can relate to, and hence while you read it you can relate to it and compare numerous situations to ones you might have experienced during your professional life.
This books is well written and presented in logical order, so you will not get lost in the middle, and the data interconnects nicely to give the reader an overall vision on where to go in order to achieve greatness in business life.
This book is not a step by step instructional publication on what to do to become great, but it is a great source of other peoples experiences that can give you a long-term vision on where you should head of you want to make the leap from good to great.
A nice complement/follow up to this book would be Jack: Straight From the Gut (read my review over there).

Rating:
Summary: Not a Sequel to "Built to Last"
Review: REVIEW: How do you become "great"? Well, you study what the great do and emulate them. That's the point of "Good to Great". This book answers the question, "How does a good company become a great company?" The research team found 11 companies that met their stringent stock performance criteria exemplifying "good to great". Then they collected, filtered and studied tons of data on these companies and determined the patterns that explain how they became great companies. They distilled their findings in a fairly simple, easy to understand model having six components. I'm very often disappointed with models used is business books (note: this is not just a business book) but the models used here seemed natural and didn't come off as forced or too clever. While the book is based on very in-depth research, it does not read like a research report. The author has done an excellent job at bridging the gap between first rate research and a mass market audience. Many best sellers are "fad" books - this one is not. Highly recommended for those interested in organizational excellence.

STRENGTHS: Collin's writing is very interesting and easy to read with lots of real world examples and anecdotes. The book is a quick read and many readers will finish it within a weekend. While based on lots of research, the book does not read like a boring textbook. The authors conclusions are delivered simply and concisely and chapters are summed up in key points.

WEAKNESSES: Minor but: Too much focus on stock price as a measure of greatness (but what alternative was there?). Charts are misleading because they are not logarithmic (distorts true performance). Found the repeated phrase "If you would have put $1 into ___ in 19xx you would have $__ annoying.

WHO SHOULD READ THIS BOOK: All managers, executives, and leaders of any type of organization as well as those others interested in organizational excellence.

ALSO CONSIDER: Of course, Built to Last by J Collins & J Porras. Also, most themes in Good to Great have a lot of similarity to concepts of Peter Drucker - see for example, Managing for Results and On the Profession of Management.

[feedback welcome]

Rating:
Summary: Good but not Great
Review: Trust Jim Collins to make a management book that is both engaging and logical. Good To Great's elegant simplicity belies the huge amounts of research and interviews that went into it.

The book espouses the classic "find the right people", "ready for change" and "steady wins the race" virtues for making a business empire. The book also expressed typical distaste for corporate extravagance, marketing hyperbole and superstar executives. Granted, there is nothing new or radical here.

Sometimes I find the management terms here grating. The "flywheel" idea and the "hedgehog and fox" concept sounds downright silly to me, although the underlying principles are insightful. Also, I am not too comfortable with Collins' use of comparison companies. According to the book, the companies that did not apply the fundamental principles are doomed to absolute failure.

Good book overall. Nothing groundbreaking, but fun to read.

Rating:
Summary: A great framework for creating great organizations
Review: Jim Collins presents very interesting findings in his study of 11 good-to-great companies. The concept of Level 5 Leadership is different from the typical leadership models prescribed by management gurus and completely refreshing. And his approach toward creating evolutionary change (the flywheel concept) is right on target. A great template for thinking about leading organizations toward becoming great and sustainable.

Rating:
Summary: Offers well-reasoned recommendations
Review: Why some companies thrive and others do not is the core theme of Jim Collins' Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap... And Others Don't. Collins and his team of researchers surveyed 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They refined their list to eleven corporations (including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo) and in the process discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of what goes into the forumula for corporate success. Collins and his associates found that the corporate 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 core 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. Profusely illustrated with dozens of stories and examples from both the great and not so great, Collins offers well-reasoned recommendations for others seeking to achieve excellence in their corporate performance regardless of its size or fields of endeavor. Also available as an in abridged audiocassette and CD formats.

Rating:
Summary: Loaded With Information
Review: This book is honest, thorough, and practical in its presentation of data from research. Some may argue about how precise it is, statistically. The author is trying to impart anecdotal and empirical support for leadership successes, not prove that they are statistically and mathematically perfect. The book is loaded with good information for all who are interested in leadership to follow. Additional information and knowledge that I, as a consultant, would recommend reading in order to attain a complete understanding of leadership (outside the scope of "Good to Great"), is a simply written book I recommend to my clients called, "West Point", by Norman Thomas Remick. I give some clients a copy of James C. Collins' "Good to Great" and clients in other fields different ones. To all, however, I recommend getting that book on the basic philosophical principles that underpin leadership in order to fully understand leadership, and effectively be a good leader.

Rating:
Summary: Valuable Business Tool
Review: This is one of the best books about leadership that I have read. It gives clear, concise examples of successful situations where a company went from "good" to "great" and stayed there. The lessons in this book can be applied to any company in any industry. Don't miss this one.

Rating:
Summary: Because good is the enemy of great...
Review: Jim Collins, author of the seminal classic Built to Last, addresses a dilemma many entrepreneurs face. Can a good (read: average) company evolve into a great one, effectively re-jiggering the culture and direction of a company once set? In a well-researched tome that is both easy to read (I finished it in three days) and clearly/compellingly articulated, Collins concludes that average companies can indeed morph into great ones. Providing excellent guidance for decision-making on new and existing ventures, he bucket-izes the structure of his conclusions under the aegis of disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Among the conclusions about Good to Great companies:

1. Their leaders are less differentiated by charisma or brilliant vision and more by humility and unrelenting will.

2. Their focus is first on WHO (i.e., getting the right people through the door and in the right position, and the wrong people out door), then WHAT (i.e., figuring out and building the strategy)-- not the other way around.

3. They confront the brutal facts and deal with them directly and decisively by "shining a light" on the key issues impacting the business and taking a "need to know" perspective at all times to reality as it really exists. At the same time, this pragmatism is counterbalanced by an unrelenting guttural belief that they will prevail in the end (called the Stockdale Paradox).

4. They build their strategy around three core circles (target markets they realistically believe they can dominate, ones with compelling economics, and ones they can be truly passionate about), and then come up with a crystallizing concept (called the Hedgehog) that flows from a deep understanding of the dynamics of the three circles.

5. The hedgehog concept's power is less a function of one big transformation and more a product of many incremental improvements, culminating in the breakout success (debunking the myth of the overnight success). Ironically, to those inside the company the magnitude of the transformation is often unclear at the time.

6. They depend on building a culture of self-disciplined team members around the three circles (disciplined people, practicing disciplined thought and translating that into disciplined action) to the point of avoiding any "once in a lifetime opportunities" that fall outside the hedgehog concept. Also, as a result, they are able to avoid bureaucratic corporate structures.

7. They embrace new technologies solely as accelerators of the three circles and not creators of them, and avoid investments that don't specifically feed the three circles.

8. There are no inconsistencies with reconciling short-term financial performance pressures and maintaining long-term adherence to working the flywheel of the hedgehog concept to create a virtuous cycle of growth and sustenance. In short, these companies embrace the paradox that managing for both short-term and long-term success simultaneously is challenging but part of the "problem" being solved by the business.

Good to Great is a must read for people committed to building and/or investing in great businesses, as well as those personally driven to become great at what they do professionally.

Rating:
Summary: good to great -another giant step in cracking the code
Review: Jim Collins has provided another level of best practises code for my constituents in the venture capital space to learn from.The only problem with this book is that it will be read and not appreciated by the rank and file good and not-so- good.Jim
keeps discovering the traits that add up to philosophies and too many people are hardwired into their own belief systems which is largely a "whats in it for me" --thus they cant even begin to comprehend the magnificent recipe Jim serves up here.This book with Built To Last if taught students from the get go could cause a revolution of prosperity and joyous endeavors in the world beyond our comprehension.Whoever reads this with self reflecting honesty will be changed for the better.I hope Jim keeps researching and analyzing for a long time--we need his work and more like him.

Rating:
Summary: Asking And Answering The Right Questions
Review: Collins continues his quest [begun with Built To Last]for detailing the special circumstances and conditions for businesses, and non-profit organizations presumably, who have achieved that special status of corporate identity ... Great. He makes his case with well researched data and documentation and leaves little to question.

Executives at various organizational levels need to examine this new book carefully. It tells, once again, the essential patterns of executive behavior which have allowed certain businesses to "succeed" beyond its competition; an important measurement for any manager worth his/her salt. A new "must read" for organization managers in 2002.