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

James C. Collins

4.12 · Rating details · 148,267 ratings · 4,866 reviews

To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. The findings will surprise many readers and, quite frankly, upset others.

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 very beginning.

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?

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. ...more

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Hardcover, 300 pages

Published October 16th 2001 by Harper Business

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Sep 18, 2011 Riku Sayuj rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Nishant Singh

Recommended to Riku by: Prof. Neerja Pande

Shelves: mba-stuff, r-r-rs

First and foremost, Good to Great has no breakthrough concepts to offer. Collins is good at inventive metaphors and catch phrases to push concepts through but ultimately there is really nothing counter-intuitive or revolutionary about the results of this study.

That said, the concepts in the book might still be valuable for managers, CEOs and other professionals. Here is a brief summary of the book and a short tour on how to take your company from Good to Great:

Think of this as a time-line to be ...more

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Jul 31, 2008 Jamie rated it did not like it

This book by Jim Collins is one of the most successful books to be found in the "Business" section of your local megabookstore, and given how it purports to tell you how to take a merely good company and make it great, it's not difficult to see why that might be so. Collins and his crack team of researchers say they swam through stacks of business literature in search of info on how to pull this feat off, and came up with a list of great companies that illustrate some concepts central to the puz This book by Jim Collins is one of the most successful books to be found in the "Business" section of your local megabookstore, and given how it purports to tell you how to take a merely good company and make it great, it's not difficult to see why that might be so. Collins and his crack team of researchers say they swam through stacks of business literature in search of info on how to pull this feat off, and came up with a list of great companies that illustrate some concepts central to the puzzle. They also present for each great company what they call a "comparison company," which is kind of that company with a goatee and a much less impressive earnings record. The balance of the book is spent expanding on pithy catch phrases that describe the great companies, like "First Who, Then What" or "Be a Hedgehog" or "Grasp the Flywheel, not the Doom Loop." No, no, I'm totally serious.

I've got several problems with this book, the biggest of which stem from fundamentally viewpoints on how to do research. Collin's brand of research is not my kind. It's not systematic, it's not replicable, it's not generalizable, it's not systematic, it's not free of bias, it's not model driven, and it's not collaborative. It's not, in short, scientific in any way. That's not to say that other methods of inquiry are without merit --the Harvard Business Review makes pretty darn good use of case studies, for example-- but way too often Collins's great truths seemed like square pegs crammed into round holes, because a round hole is what he wants. For example, there's no reported search for information that disconfirms his hypotheses. Are there other companies that don't make use of a Culture of Discipline (Chapter 6, natch) but yet are still great according to Collins's definition? Are there great companies that fail to do some of the things he says should make them great? The way that the book focuses strictly on pairs of great/comparison companies smacks of confirmatory information bias, which is a kink in the human mind that drives us to seek out and pay attention to information that confirms our pre-existing suppositions and ignore information that fails to support them.

Relatedly, a lot of the book's themes and platitudes strike me as owing their popularity to the same factors that make the horoscope or certain personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator so popular: they're so general and loosely defined that almost anyone can look at that and not only say that wow, that make sense, and I've always felt the same way! This guy and me? We're geniuses! The chapter about "getting the right people on the bus" that extols the virtue of hiring really super people is perhaps the most obvious example. Really, did anyone read this part and think "Oh, man. I've been hiring half retarded chimps. THAT'S my problem! I should hire GOOD people!" Probably not, and given that Collins doesn't go into any detail about HOW to do this or any of his other good to great pro tips, I'm not really sure where the value is supposed to be.

It also irked me that Good to Great seems to try and exist in a vacuum, failing to relate its findings to any other body of research except Collins's other book, Built to Last. The most egregious example of this is early on in Chapter 2 where Collins talks about his concept of "Level 5 Leadership," which characterizes those very special folks who perch atop a supposed leadership hierarchy. The author actually goes into some detail describing Level 5 leaders, but toward the end of the chapter he just shrugs his figurative shoulders and says "But we don't know how people get to be better leaders. Some people just are." Wait, what? People in fields like Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Organizational Development have been studying, scientifically, what great leaders do and how to do it for decades. We know TONS about how to become a better leader. There are entire industries built around it. You would think that somebody on the Good to Great research team may have done a cursory Google search on this.

So while Good to Great does have some interesting thoughts and a handful of amusing or even fascinating stories to tell about the companies it profiles (I liked, for example, learning about why Walgreens opens so many shops in the same area, even to the point of having stores across the street from each other in some cities), ultimately it strikes me as vague generalities and little to no practical information about how to actually DO anything to make your company great. ...more

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Feb 19, 2017 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it

Shelves: non-fiction, 21th-century, management, leadership, united-states, business

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

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't is a management book by Jim C. Collins that describes how companies transition from being good companies to great companies, and how most companies fail to make the transition.

The book was published on October 16, 2001.

Greatness is defined as financial performance several multiples better than the market average over a sustained period.

Using ...more

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Nov 28, 2011 Chad Kettner rated it liked it

Shelves: business

Here are Jim Collins' seven characteristics of companies that went "from good to great"

1. Level 5 Leadership: Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what's best for the company.

2. First Who, Then What: Get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to go. Finding the right people and trying them out in different positions.

3. Confront the Brutal Facts: The Stockdale paradox - Confront the brutal truth of the situation, yet at the same time, never give up hope.

4. Hedgehog Concept: Three ...more

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Jul 02, 2016 R.K. Gold rated it it was amazing

Why Indie Authors Should Read Business Books

I am finally pursuing my lifelong passion of becoming an author, and writing is a business, so I needed to invest in myself. I figured "the bible" of the business world would have some interesting things to say. After all, a business of one is still a business and who wouldn't enjoy the leap from mediocrity to longevity? The book made it clear that building a great business isn't just about a great leader who exits the company, only to have it fall apa Why Indie Authors Should Read Business Books

I am finally pursuing my lifelong passion of becoming an author, and writing is a business, so I needed to invest in myself. I figured "the bible" of the business world would have some interesting things to say. After all, a business of one is still a business and who wouldn't enjoy the leap from mediocrity to longevity? The book made it clear that building a great business isn't just about a great leader who exits the company, only to have it fall apart. What makes a great business, and leader of the business, is someone who is able to build something that will last long after their lifetime.

That should resonate with authors. I don't know any authors that want their books to disappear without their presence? We have the benefit of creating products that at the very least will never go out of style. Innovations may change the way we read but they will never eliminate books altogether. What we write will last and it's our responsibility to build something from it so people actually give a damn about our work long after we are gone.

The lessons in this book teach a person how to develop a strategy, how to build a team, the importance of being disciplined, and the importance of managing expectations.

The Hedgehog Concept is something creatives should be able to maneuver to their advantage. It's all about finding what you can be best at, passionate about, and quantifying how to measure your success. For an author maybe that's finding a niche and having the discipline to stick with it rather than chasing the latest genre fad.

For building a team, again think about how many people it takes to make a book. You don't just write a draft and publish it on KDP. If you do, and are successful than I am jealous but most of us can't write perfection the first go around. You need beta readers to give you general feedback on what's working and what's not; you need an editor (or two) to make sure it's readable; you need a top-notch book cover (some authors can make their own, some need to add a graphic designer to their team) and finally you need to build your audience, because they're the most important part of the team.

Though there are a lot of lessons in this book the final thing I'm gonna touch on is the Stockdale Paradox. It's all about managing expectations. You can truly believe you are going to find success, while also managing that expectation. Stockdale was a POW in Vietnam who knew he would return home but kept his sanity because he knew it would be a while, while other soldiers in the camp were overly optimistic, thought they would get home by Christmas, only to be heartbroken when their expectations failed.

Pursuing a creative endeavor is still a business, and today it's never been easier for someone to enter that business It's my educated guess that it's in order for creatives to educate themselves on traditional business practices if they hope to sustain long-term growth and success in their field. ...more

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Feb 07, 2019 Emily rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: business

Okay, let's get this out of the way first: this book is DATED. It studies eleven companies that beat the stock market over a period of fifteen years, irrespective of industry (other comparison companies in the same industries did not produce the same results). Unfortunately, these eleven companies include Fannie Mae, Circuit City, Wells Fargo, and Philip Morris (??!?). The findings are ultimately interesting and I think the writers would argue that the recent performance of the companies don't a Okay, let's get this out of the way first: this book is DATED. It studies eleven companies that beat the stock market over a period of fifteen years, irrespective of industry (other comparison companies in the same industries did not produce the same results). Unfortunately, these eleven companies include Fannie Mae, Circuit City, Wells Fargo, and Philip Morris (??!?). The findings are ultimately interesting and I think the writers would argue that the recent performance of the companies don't affect the findings' validity, but boy is it a trip to read about Wells Fargo as a paragon of excellence in the year 2019.

James Collins wrote this with a large group of researchers, and the methodology and results are explained in more detail in the extensive appendices at the end of the book. They distill their findings into seven key themes around what helps a company go from mediocre to truly "great," which they define as beating the stock market by a certain margin over a long period of time. I realize that I am reading a business book and by default there needs to be a core metric by which we recognize businesses as "good" or "great," but I had some trouble with the complete disregard for social impact that powers this book. Collins says that looking at employee or social welfare would have introduced biases into the study, but I would also say that there is an inherent bias in defining a business's "greatness" solely by its stock returns and shareholder value—which is why you end up with Philip Morris in your group of "great" companies. (Your definition for success is not the same as mine!) It's also interesting that the research group tends to handwave around employee motivation, morale, and fulfillment for all of the "great" companies as a natural outcome of business success, but does not offer any metrics or background on this in the text of the book.

All that aside, I found some of the takeaways truly interesting:

* Charisma is detrimental to leadership: The good-to-great companies all had "Level 5" leaders, which the research group defines as a leader who is incredibly driven but extremely humble. The Level 5 leaders aren't charismatic or larger-than-life figures: they center their companies on one purpose and build strong systems that move the entire company in one direction. The true tell of this type of leader is if the company survives and flourishes after they leave (are you more worried about your CEO, or about the reality of your situation?). Charismatic outside leaders produced consistently worse results and the companies stagnated after their departure. It's also worth noting that executive compensation had absolutely no measurable effect on a company's success.

* Managing morale and motivation is largely a waste of time: If employees instinctively understand the vision of the company and how they contribute to its success, there is no reason to "motivate" or spend time managing change. I don't think this is ever 100% true (and it is precluded by the necessity to have the right people in the right roles), but I found this perspective interesting and the examples rang true to me.

* Stay focused on your central concept: The book refers to this as the "Hedgehog Concept," a term that I refuse to use. It combines the Venn diagram of these three things: (1) what are you truly passionate about? (2) what drives your economic engine? and (3) what can you be best in the world at? If you aren't driving towards an intersection of all three, you will not be able to achieve sustained results. This requires a culture of discipline throughout all levels of the company.

* Understand the brutal reality: The successful companies understood the "brutal facts of reality" when making business decisions and candidly discussed and planned for that reality. That sometimes requires an entire business shift to align yourself with your central concept. (When you see user or customer research that upends your assumptions, do not ignore it.) This also reinforces the need for long-term investment. The writers' point was that you cannot be an optimist ("this will all work out!"), but you must confront reality and simultaneously strongly believe that you will succeed, despite the odds. You also must create an environment where the truth is heard, which requires the leaders to ask questions, hold themselves to high standards, and build red-flag mechanisms to get advance notice of issues.

Anyway, I found the book both interesting and frustrating to read. The research team commits the cardinal sin of all business books, which is comparing every single concept to a famous thinker. Einstein did not model simplistic thinking (has this man ever read a proof of E = mc2? get back to me after you have done it) and Abraham Lincoln is not comparable to a CEO. I wish that these types of comparisons could be completely excised from our discourse. I rolled my eyes through much of this nonsense and it really detracted from my engagement with the book.

I also found it frustrating that diversity of thought and teams never comes up in this book. Every single CEO mentioned is a man, and most of the named executives at these companies are men. You can read into the concept of "getting the right people on the bus" as assembling the correct team, but then the book goes on to say that employee incentives and compensation matter much less than you think they do. That depends on who you are hiring and what their personal priorities are, and that will always differ for individuals. I did like that part of the leadership discussion hinges on whether internal or external leadership is better for a company; most of the Level 5 leaders in the book are internal choices, which intuitively makes sense because they are able to fully grasp the core concept and values of the company.

Finally, it is hilarious to read sentences like "Amazon.com, the reigning champion of e-commerce" and "today, we primarily use portables from companies like Dell and Sony." 2001 was a wild time. 2019 is a wild time!! In the last 18 years, these good-to-great companies have imploded in on themselves!! Hopefully, the lessons from this book endure longer than Fannie Mae's reputation. ...more

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Feb 11, 2017 Praveen rated it really liked it

"People often ask, "what motivates you to undertake these huge research projects?"
It's a good question. The answer is "curiosity."
There is nothing I find more exciting than picking a question that I don't know the answer to and embarking on a quest for answers. It's deeply satisfying to climb into the boat, like Lewis and Clark, and head west, saying," We don't know what we will find when we get there, but we'll be sure to let you know when we get back."

This undaunted curiosity is the stimulus o "People often ask, "what motivates you to undertake these huge research projects?"
It's a good question. The answer is "curiosity."
There is nothing I find more exciting than picking a question that I don't know the answer to and embarking on a quest for answers. It's deeply satisfying to climb into the boat, like Lewis and Clark, and head west, saying," We don't know what we will find when we get there, but we'll be sure to let you know when we get back."

This undaunted curiosity is the stimulus of this work, proclaims the author, in the beginning, justifying why he got down to such a grueling task. Though this book is exclusively for the management students and for the corporate guys, I still feel, this book is very well researched and can be read by them also, who have the least interests in companies and businesses. This book is a result of the hard toil of a large research team of Jim Collins after 'Built to Last'.If you read it, you will find the reason why millions of copies have been sold of this. Wall Street Journal's CEO council declared it the best management book they have read.

This book is all about why some companies leap from 'good to great' and others don't!
The first thing it tries to preach is that Good is the enemy of great.Few people attain greatness, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. Next, the book talks about a kind of 'Level 5 leadership',

"leaders of a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.they are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustainable results. they display workmanlike diligence, more plow horse than show horse. they look out of a window to attribute success to factors other than themselves."

In the subsequent chapters, comes the idea of choosing the right guys. It's important first getting the right people on the bus (and wrong people off the bus) and then figure out where to drive it.
Then there is a 'Stockdale Paradox' in this book, which is equally applicable in any field of life.

"Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.....And at the same time ......Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be."

There are many other concepts outlined in this book, they look technical, so much business involved in them, but they are quite handy even to the simpler minds, quite comprehensible even to those ordinary mortals like me. The research done for this book may have taken a huge amount of resources, time and energy, but as a consequence, the major findings and learnings of this project are rather uncomplicated. The key elements of greatness are deceptively simple and straightforward. I feel this book is a wonderful exhibition of undemanding intelligence encrusted with due diligence.

In the end, Even if you think in contrast. If you think you are already gratified to the goodness around you and think after reading the title of this book.....Why greatness? I don't need that!
Then the book has an answer for you as well. It says it's almost a nonsense question. If you are engaged in a work that you love and care about, for whatever reason, then the question needs no answer.

The question is not why, but how! ...more

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Aug 05, 2017 Trevor rated it liked it

Shelves: economics, psychology

I’ve been reading quite a few books about leadership lately – I can't really say that I’ve been terribly impressed with them. They read too much like that terribly American genre of books – the self-help book. Invariably, they seem to have appeared fully formed out of the research of the people behind the book itself. This is particularly amusing here, since people have been concerned with the nature of leadership pretty much forever. The other thing that I find a little odd about these books is I’ve been reading quite a few books about leadership lately – I can't really say that I’ve been terribly impressed with them. They read too much like that terribly American genre of books – the self-help book. Invariably, they seem to have appeared fully formed out of the research of the people behind the book itself. This is particularly amusing here, since people have been concerned with the nature of leadership pretty much forever. The other thing that I find a little odd about these books is that leadership is rarely defined in them. I guess we are supposed to take the attitude that it might well be hard to say what leadership is, but we all know it when we see it – so, leadership is a bit like pornography in that sense. Given that this form of research sees itself as so ‘revolutionary’ in just about all senses, it ought to say things, you would expect, that would be more than just a series of platitudes. I didn’t really come away thinking that sense, however. Parts of this were okay – but I really didn’t come away, as the author clearly thought I ought to have, thinking that they had gone off into the great unknown and returned more or less unharmed to tell the story. If I hadn’t been reading this book for a reason, I would have stopped when the author compared himself to Lewis and Clark (and he did so without a hint of irony).

This book is concerned with finding the attributes that companies have that start out average only to then move on to being exceptional. They have defined exceptional companies as those that perform at three times the market for 15 years – this is quite a good definition of exceptional, I guess. But, some of the companies have not done quite so well since this was written (not sure how many people would write a book today about the glories of Freddie Mac today, just saying) – the GFC clearly wasn’t all that kind to some companies and whether or not ‘leadership’ was the only factor at play here is an interesting question in itself, although, given the success of these firms is tied to leadership in this book, presumably failure is also to be considered a leadership issue – still, this is all beyond the psycho-babble of this kind of book. Oh, I’m jumping ahead too quickly – but that, in a nutshell, is probably one of my main concerns with books like this – organisations are essentially collections of people engaged in complex interactions, and so psychology (that is, a science focused on the individual) is quite likely to miss the point. The limits of psychology in coming to terms with human interactions beyond the individual - is, again, an interesting question and one that is not addressed here at all. And this is hardly surprising, since a book that focuses our attention on how 'leadership' accounts for a businesses success is hardly going to move too far beyond 'psychology'.

The book finds that these companies all shared seven characteristics. The first of these was perhaps the one I found most interesting – that is, that their leaders all tended to be ‘anti-Trump’ type people. That is, they were all people who were much more interested in the success of the company, rather than in their own personal success and aggrandisement - they tended to be humble, they tended to be focused on their love of whatever it was they were doing, rather than on having people tell them how fantastic they are. As such, these people often remained unsung despite the exceptional achievements they made. This often meant that they had a singleness of purpose that might not be as apparent in people who want success for its own sake. They also remained unsung for their success since they generally did not attribute their success to their own actions as much as other leaders (again, think Trump) might. They understood the luck and contingency involved in success and this fed into their own humility. Having a personal preference for humble people myself – the Japanese PM’s wife who sat beside Trump for 2 hours and did not let him know she spoke English is currently one of my heroes – it is nice that some management types think that such a personality trait is worthwhile. Like I said, this was a finding I was somewhat surprised to find in a book like this.

Perhaps the major benefit of such self-effacing people is that they understand that they are unlikely to be successful purely on their own. Therefore they are much more like to also see that it is essential that they surround themselves with people who are going to be good at what they do and that are, potentially, a bit like them in their dedication to the task at hand. In this book this idea is summed up by the idea of these leaders making sure they have the right people in the right place. There is lots of talk about buses thought out this book - basically, these books seem to be mostly about milking a particular metaphor or series of metaphors to death - getting people onto the bus, off the bus and in the right place on the bus being but one of those metaphors worked to death in this book. The author repeatedly says that getting the right people is more important than necessarily getting people who know what it is they are doing - the right people basically being able to learn whatever it is that is necessary for them to do and anyway, since all leadership is essentially change management, getting people who are able to learn and change is the key. Here is the notion that leadership is a particular set of skills that can be applied anywhere and is always just as effective. This exaggerated version of the story isn’t entirely the case, even for this author, but the differences that make a difference are never so much around the types of work expected, but rather the ‘values’ of the company and in getting employees who will live up to those. Finding people who share the company’s values is central to getting the right people.

We need to talk about hindsight bias. When a company is successful it is pretty likely that it is successful because all the bits of the company work well together. If some bits of the company are actively working to undermine other bits of the company it would seem pretty likely that the company as a whole isn’t going to be successful. So, saying that very successful companies are made up of parts that work well together and that the people leading those parts are team players all seems a bit obvious to me. Perhaps saying ‘they are the right people in the right jobs’ is saying something important - but it isn’t at all clear to me how you would know beforehand.

Given that everyone is an expert in hindsight, it wasn’t all that clear to me how you might go about picking the ‘right people’ - and it also seemed pretty obvious that when things stuffed up, inevitably, you could argue that it was because you had inadvertently chosen the ‘wrong’ people. The other problem I have with this idea is one I also had with Taylorism and scientific management, which also has a long section on getting the ‘right people’ - that is, that too often leaders simply don’t have the luxury of being able to make those choices and of backing out of choices once it becomes clear the wrong one has been made. To me, a great leader would be one who can succeed with what they have, rather than having to create the perfect environment first. But I’m not exactly a great world leader, so, what would I know?

This problem of hindsight comes up again in the next attribute - great leaders face the brutal facts of the situation they find themselves in and are unflinching in how they stare into this particular abyss. It isn’t clear to me how you might navigate a changing environment - something all of these ‘great leaders’ here invariably did - without doing something that could be called ‘coming to terms with the brutal facts of your situation’. Look, I do understand that perhaps my shares in Hansom Cabs are never going to reach the dizzying heights they achieved in the 1870s, but I’m not sure just what ‘brutally’ facing reality means - other than it being something you will inevitably say you have done when any changes you make pay off.

I have another problem with this - and that relates to the basic positivist underlying assumptions of such theories. That is, the idea that there is essentially one ‘truth’ and even though it ‘likes to hide’, if you pursue it with objectivity and determination you will certainly find it. I feel the world is much more messy than that and that while you can say that if you don’t pay any attention to the world around you then things are likely to stuff up pretty badly, you are always operating with incomplete data (something they even say at one point) and so being told to face what that data tells you with unflinching determination is either not telling us very much or possibly not even telling us anything at all.

The next metaphor that gets a long run is the fox and the hedgehog. Basically, this comes from some philosopher who said there are two kinds of people (and, unfortunately didn’t go on to say, those who group people into two camps and those who don’t) - rather he felt the two groups were those who are like foxes: smart, resourceful, cunning and innovative - and those like hedgehogs, with basically one trick - to roll into a ball.

This guy is particularly fond of hedgehogs. He advises companies to figure out their hedgehog concept is - that is, the basic idea they have that might allow them to become best in the world at, the idea that makes them their money, and that drives their passion (you know, just like a hedgehog is passionate about rolling into a ball) and then to make sure everything they do as a company is focused on that hedgehog concept. My problem here is that while the author has problems with foxes, it isn’t clear to me that the fox has been evolutionarily less successful than the hedgehog. In fact, the author spends quite a bit of time talking about General Electric and, well, fitting this company into the hedgehog idea seemed a bit of ‘square peg and round hole’ problem to me.

That said, it is hard to see how ‘figure out what you are good at and do that’ could be bad advice. I can’t say I came away from this book thinking, ‘wow, who’d have thought you should do what you are good at if you want to succeed?’

There was a nice bit of this book about technology - that it, on its own, doesn’t lead to greatness, although it always plays a role. Pretty much the advice here is to work out what you need to do to be great and then figure out how technology might help you achieve that, rather than hope putting wiz-bang technology into your systems will somehow make them good systems. This seems completely obvious to me as well, however.

As you might already know, I generally don’t read books like this, but I’ve had to as I’m doing research on Teach for Australia and they stress that teaching is leadership - and use this book to support that claim. So, I was expecting this book to be something quite different to what it turned out to be - I was expecting it to be something much more, to be honest. It is hard to be in your 50’s and have decades of working with people who have been keen to implement the kinds of ideas discussed in this book upon people in their organisations, without being somewhat cynical about such visions splendid such leadership revolutionaries present. I can’t recommend this book, but it was important that I read it, I think. ...more

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Nov 04, 2008 Sandy rated it it was ok

Shelves: business

I hope I don't get fired for not thinking this was the greatest book ever. Honestly, business books are not exactly my cup of tea. This book started off really interesting. The author talks about habits that great companies use to keep their companies run smoothly. Many of the suggestions the author gives seem very logical -- don't have negative people work for your company, don't try to put your hand in every pot, don't stop doing things that work well and do stop doing things that aren't worki I hope I don't get fired for not thinking this was the greatest book ever. Honestly, business books are not exactly my cup of tea. This book started off really interesting. The author talks about habits that great companies use to keep their companies run smoothly. Many of the suggestions the author gives seem very logical -- don't have negative people work for your company, don't try to put your hand in every pot, don't stop doing things that work well and do stop doing things that aren't working, etc.

I had two major concerns with this book. First was simply the manner in which it was written. The author spent hundreds of pages explaining what could have been explained much more succinctly. It's similar to my thesis. My completed thesis was 60+ pages, but the article I wrote to be published in a journal (which consists of the same material, more or less) was only about 15 pages. I would be more interested in this book if it was written in "journal" form, allowing me to cut out the redundancy. To the author's credit, however, I appreciated that he did give examples, as often I was very confused by his explanation of the concept, and wouldn't have understood without his providing an example they found in one of the companies.

My second major concern was the methodology. The author utilizes no scientific method for gathering data, but instead utilizes a "panning for gold" approach: throw everything into the pot and see what comes out. That, combined with overwhelming hindsight bias, makes me extremely suspicious of any and every conclusion drawn in the book. While reading this book, I was reminded of one of my undergraduate teachers explaining the advantage that Freud had as an early psychologist: because of his theories, he could not be proven wrong. How do you prove that someone isn't in denial? How do you prove that someone isn't obsessed with his mother? Likewise, how do you prove that these theories proposed by Jim Collins actually work? Indeed, Collins later predicts, at the end of his book, that any company that STOPS abiding by the principles he outlines will fail. With his "interesting" methodology, I doubt that his principles would have a causal link to either success or failure. I expect that many companies fail, and that many companies are very successful, without regard to his theories. In addition, a problem with his methodology is that he measured "greatness" by a company's sustained stock market value being a certain percentage (150%) above the general market--what about private companies? How can a private company measure greatness if that is the standard?

So, overall, I enjoyed this book at the beginning and became bored with it by the end. I think there are some good principles that can be pulled out of it, but I fear that some companies will take this book too much to heart and let other important factors slip.

Rob, please don't fire me. :) ...more

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Apr 19, 2009 Chad Warner rated it did not like it

Recommended to Chad by: Jeff Disher

Shelves: non-fiction, business

I was hoping this book would give me some guidelines to remember when I start my own business. There were a few good points, but nothing compelling. Reading this book wasn't a very good use of my time.

Tips from the book:

First Who, then What
First, get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off it), then figure out where to drive. Having the right people in the company is more important than deciding what the company will do, because the right people will help make that decision anyway. ...more

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Nov 18, 2007 Allen rated it really liked it

Just (12/21/2011) re-read the book and love the concepts. But I knocked a star off of my rating since during this re-read I felt like the author puffed up the findings and, indirectly, himself. Sure, good-to-great principles seem to be true, insightful, and necessary for a transformation. I even found that re-reading this book helped me to realize I was being quite undisciplined in my use of time (trying to create momentum by doing, doing, doing instead of "unplugging extraneous junk.") But I do Just (12/21/2011) re-read the book and love the concepts. But I knocked a star off of my rating since during this re-read I felt like the author puffed up the findings and, indirectly, himself. Sure, good-to-great principles seem to be true, insightful, and necessary for a transformation. I even found that re-reading this book helped me to realize I was being quite undisciplined in my use of time (trying to create momentum by doing, doing, doing instead of "unplugging extraneous junk.") But I don't think Collins has found the gospel and he plays it up to that level.

I started reading it and then gave it to my boss. I'm currently listening to the audio book but I would like to own a hardcover copy. (2007)

The concept that has struck me as most applicable (so far), particularly with respect to businesses, is the need to get the right people on the team first and in the right positions, then decide what to do. Managers should not waste time and energy motivating people to excellence. Instead, they should give self-motivating people a vision they can support and work hard to bring to realization. Fewer great people on the team are better than lots of mediocre people. The mediocre people just make extra work for the great people and the net result is "good". It's easier to be great than good.

Another interesting concept I've been told about, but haven't read about yet, is the flywheel. Progress is made by implementing small changes at opportune times. Momentum is gained slowly and steadily by these small, periodic decisions. The image used by Collins is that of a flywheel with lots of inertia. Each little push eases the flywheel ahead. The wheel starts rotating slowly but as little pushes continue to be made, the wheel picks up momentum and is hard to stop. This concept is seen in the growth that companies like Google have experienced. Google started out as just a slightly better search engine. Small changes at opportune times have turned it into the booming multi-service company that it is today ...more

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Aug 04, 2009 Steve rated it liked it

I have no idea how much Jim Collins knows about business / management, but it is clear he’s mastered the art of writing a popular business / management book. The way I see it, the steps involved are:

* State up front what the themes are, but disguise at least a few of them with cryptic labels that portend greater meaning to those who venture further. Who wouldn’t read on when enticed by the promise of the lowly hedgehog’s secret for success or how Admiral Stockdale’s paradoxical key to survival a I have no idea how much Jim Collins knows about business / management, but it is clear he’s mastered the art of writing a popular business / management book. The way I see it, the steps involved are:

* State up front what the themes are, but disguise at least a few of them with cryptic labels that portend greater meaning to those who venture further. Who wouldn’t read on when enticed by the promise of the lowly hedgehog’s secret for success or how Admiral Stockdale’s paradoxical key to survival as a P.O.W. can be applied for corporate gain?

* Supply lots of lists, charts, and visuals. Venn diagrams are especially good, it seems. The confluence of 3 good traits at the virtuous center constitutes a synergized sweet spot for those clever enough to recognize it.

* Make common sense bromides sound less trite. You can’t just say, “Hire good people.” It’s better to say you have to get the right people on the bus, and further, that the right people have to be in the right seats. The bus connotes movement, you see; progress towards a common goal. Choosing the perfect metaphor is part of what separates the business-writing cream from the chaff.

* Common sense is good, but for variety, a few counterintuitive insights should be included, too. These can give the savvy reader an extra edge. Even the cagiest adversaries (among those outside the circle of 3 million purchasers privy to the book’s ironic findings) would not figure out such things as the importance of humility among top-tier leaders or that “stop doing” lists are more important than “to do” lists.

* Bulletize. Summarize. Rinse. Repeat.

As I get off my weisenheiming horse for a minute, there probably are some useful concepts here. This was assigned reading in the office, and it does seem to have improved management focus. Plus, we’ve now established a common language regarding the basic tenets (even if certain phrases are said with a smirk--hedgehogs on buses entering the flywheel will know what I’m talking about). I’m no expert, but it’s probably good for its type.

What I can’t decide is whether the book’s research methodology was effective or not. The basic idea was to construct a sample of consistent outperformers and another sample of peers that at one time looked similar, but ultimately languished. The researchers then asked what traits separated the two samples. I sympathize with how nebulous the differentiating factors would be. There’s an inherent squishiness to them, and judgment could cloud the data. It’s a difficult task. At the same time I think it’s fair to criticize the method for its backward-looking nature. In trying to discern cause and effect, something more along the lines of a lab, where various differences could be tested against a control group before knowing the outcomes, would carry more weight. I’m always a little suspicious of studies like this. If, for instance, the true driver of success was simply a fortuitous set of circumstances (right place, right time, right regulations, right trend) then it may appear, after the fact, that it was the right people in the right seats on the bus. I’m told Malcolm Gladwell’s new book gives luck the prominence it deserves.
...more

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Nov 20, 2014 AJ rated it did not like it

A five year research study dedicated to analyzing the results of its own sampling bias without realizing it and puffed up with so much unnecessary fluff that the essence of the book could have been distilled on the front cover in a few bullet points under the title and it would have probably still been considered a waste of time to read.

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Jul 13, 2020 Shane Parrish rated it it was amazing

I love this short lesson from Jim Collin's Good to Great:

"Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems." ...more

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Mar 13, 2012 Dan W rated it it was ok

There is a valuable lesson in this book:

- Books are printed to make someone else money.

With this singular lesson in mind you can now unlock the secrets of all business and marketing books: the lesson isn't printed on the page, it's between the lines. This book sought, as all 'business' books do, to titillate you with facts, get you revved about the possibilities in your life to acquire great and fabulous riches through the magic of 'excellence' and set you loose into the world with your hair on ...more

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Aug 25, 2007 Deli rated it liked it

Recommends it for: anyone without common sense

OK, so I'm making my way through this book... painfully, slowly, pyromaniacly.... and, I do have to say it is FANTASTIC if you find yourself surrounded by people without common sense. Of course, I don't have a business degree... oh, wait, I'm not supposed to have common sense.

Anyways, now that I've trailed off into ADD tangents, my boss gave me this book to read and I do like the principles. I have one thing to say: way better than the teaching books I used to have to read. GEESH! ...more

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Nov 17, 2018 Yevgeniy Brikman rated it liked it

The good: interesting research, useful advice, great writing.
The not so good: the findings are not nearly as scientific, timeless, or widely applicable as the book claims.

The idea behind this book is that Collins and his team researched a large number of public companies, came up with a list of 11 that made a jump from "good performance" to "great performance" (i.e., significantly out-performed the market) over a sustained period of time, compared those 11 companies with 17 similar companies tha ...more

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Jan 21, 2018 Laura Noggle rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: Someone who has never read a business book.

Shelves: 2018, business, nonfiction

2 ⭐️'s: Read the chapter list, that may be all you need.

General run-of-the-mill business book full of generic platitudes, and slightly annoying catch phrases (hello Hedgehog, Flywheel, and BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)). Vague themes seem intended for mass appeal, as opposed to providing any practical advice.

To save you time, here are the chapters:

1) Good is the Enemy of Great
2) Level 5 Leadership
3) First Who, Then What
4) Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)
5) The Hedgehog Concept ...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Kressel Housman rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, unfinished, business

Good is the enemy of the great. That is the first sentence and thesis of this book. In other words, if you're performing adequately, your motivation to improve yourself can easily be stifled. After all, you're getting by. Why put in all that discipline to go from good to great? But if you want to go from good to great, this book promises you the secrets of doing it.

I guess I'm destined to be merely good because I'm returning this book to the library unfinished. I thought the advice was worth app ...more

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Oct 25, 2020 Morgan Blackledge rated it it was amazing

Oh my god!

This book makes me FREAK OUT!!!

It’s so DAMN GOOD.

No!

FUCK THAT!!!

It’s FUCKIN GREAT 😬

There you go folks...

From DAMN GOOD to FUCKIN GREAT.

But seriously...

There are some really useful ideas in this book.

Like:

Three Circles:
1. What are you passionate about?
2. What can you be best in the world at?
3. What is your hedgehog concept?

It sounds dumb when it’s bulleted like this.

But it’s not.

You just have to read it.

K?

Just read it.

Another key concept is:

The flywheel.

Yass qween yass.

Push that FUCKI ...more

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Mar 06, 2019 Abhimanu rated it it was amazing

Great nuggets of wisdom with statistical backing

flag 9 likes · Like · see review

Feb 11, 2018 Q.T. Pi rated it it was amazing

Well I read Good to Great and ya know what? I liked it. It had a lot to say on how to build a business from scratch and turn it into a thriving success. It was an easily digestible piece full of useful tidbits I hope to apply to my every day life as an author. I need to surround myself with the right team, focus on my goal, remain disciplined/not chase fads, and manage my expectations. Sounds easy enough right?

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Jan 14, 2017 Giovanni Romano rated it liked it

Too much chart and graph to be reader friendly, but overall great book for anyone who wants to become a good leader within an organization

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Aug 24, 2018 Isaac You rated it really liked it

Shelves: leadership-company-success

Just being good is not enough! Pursue greatness!!

Jim Collins, an expert in the field of leadership, introduced a story from Aesop’s Fables called “The Fox and the Hedgehog” in his own book “Good to Great.”

A fox is a cunning and beautiful creature. It is also fast, lean, and a proficient hunter. In contrast, a hedgehog is small, slow, and plump. Therefore, a hedgehog only concerns itself with finding food and caretaking its home. Every day, a fox thinks of strategies to hunt the hedgehog and bid ...more

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Feb 21, 2009 Kathleen Tallent rated it really liked it

I read this in a leadership class and it was very appropriate. I will never be the CEO of a major company, but I will help run a household, participate in a church family, help lead a therapy team, and will have many more opportunities to lead. This book gave a lot of insight into why companies are able to climb in growth and industry, but that same insight can be applied in most of life circumstances where people are grouped together. I recommended this book to multiple people working in large ...more

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Jan 05, 2021 Bianca A. rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2021, speed-read

James C. Collins has an interesting and legit background, with 4 published books in total.
In my eyes, Good to Great had a few good ideas, but everything is too generalist. Each company is unique and the book is too abstract, avoiding to put the dot on any i. Felt more like a longer essay of why X company made it big in the past or like a research paper that tried to cover too many things at once with the goal of somehow transporting it into the reader's business. I'm not entirely sure how come i ...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Len Vlahos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I finally got around to reading Good to Great. It more or less lived up to the hype as being both inspirational and instructional. I just have three quick comments:

1. Like many business books, this would be better as a long magazine article instead of a book. The author, while deft, belabors point after point. While it was less true here than in some other business books, it's still longer than it needs to be.

2. A few of the ideas put forth -- e.g., the hedgehog concept, the three circles -- ar ...more

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Oct 27, 2019 Sergey Shishkin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: leadership

I wish more authors of business best sellers would employ such rigorous research to substantiate their writing as Jim Collins did in Good to Great. The more rigorous research however, the less surprising the findings. What did distinguish companies at the stage of transition from good to great was:
* having the right people including ego-less leadership;
* seeing undistorted reality for what it is;
* focus on one mission in the intersection of their abilities, passion and financial viability.

Extra ...more

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Mar 18, 2012 Keith rated it liked it

Shelves: business

Finally read Good to Great, by Jim Collins (yes, I know that I'm a bit behind in my reading, but just never seemed to get around to this one). I thought it was good (not great) in that it didn't really tell me anything that wasn't pretty obvious. Furthermore, there is a lot of peril in identifying "great" companies that then go on to stumble (Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Pitney Bowes). I know that Collins would say that these companies stopped following those things that made them great, but that b Finally read Good to Great, by Jim Collins (yes, I know that I'm a bit behind in my reading, but just never seemed to get around to this one). I thought it was good (not great) in that it didn't really tell me anything that wasn't pretty obvious. Furthermore, there is a lot of peril in identifying "great" companies that then go on to stumble (Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Pitney Bowes). I know that Collins would say that these companies stopped following those things that made them great, but that brings up an interesting point in my eyes. Is a company ever truly "great" or is it all relative? Relative to competitive comparisons, relative to timeframe, etc.

Companies can only be measured as great at the moment you are looking at them and that greatness is rarely projectable to the future?

Why? Lets look at some of Collins' key points - those elements that allow a company to go from Good to Great:

Level 5 Leadership - This is a big one. I don't think you can have any of the rest of the items on this list if your leadership can't or won't make it happen.
The "right" employees.
A management team that is comfortable and seeks out the truth
A simple focus - knowing what you are good at - "Hedgehog Concept" - and making sure everyone knows what this concept is.
Discipline to stick to the concept - don't go off buying ancillary businesses.
Uses technology to support the hedgehog concept, don't make technology the hedgehog concept (I guess unless it is your hedgehog concept).
Doesn't expect to break through to success with a magical short-term strategy - believe in continuous improvement.
Greatness isn't projectable because so much of the list above is dependent upon people, and in reality they are dependent on the whims of very few people at the top. Change your CEO from one at Level 5 to one at Level 4 and look out below!

I firmly believe that success starts and ends with leadership - and the best companies I've worked with and for have actually had many of the above factors, because they had great management. Most, if not all, couldn't maintain the greatness and those that did often stumbled for a time and regained it (usually after a management change or after managment got "religion").

Corporations are like people (in fact, isn't that how the tax code sees them?). They have good days and bad days...they get moody sometimes...they go through difficult patches...they sometimes succeed and even surprise...but in the end, they all die. During their lives, they often get caught up in their own personal dramas, which gets them off course.

The value in books like Good to Great, and almost any business book I've read, is to remind companies of what they already know, but forgot. These are the self-help books that we all read when we're in a personal down cycle. They can be inspiring and can get us back on track...but soon enough, we need to read a new one.

For now, I'm inspired to become Great. ...more

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Jan 03, 2020 Maria rated it liked it

Shelves: human-dev, psychology

In "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" Collins tried to explain how a company can reach greatness. for this, his model which he choose after tough benchmarking research process consisted of 11 companies that were able to make the leap.
(view spoiler) In "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" Collins tried to explain how a company can reach greatness. for this, his model which he choose after tough benchmarking research process consisted of 11 companies that were able to make the leap.
(view spoiler)
You won't find a new miracle here but rather some good ideas or principles ...more

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About James C. Collins

James C. Collins

1,753 followers

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies — how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies. Having invested over a decade of research into the topic, Jim has authored or co-authored four books, including the classic BUILT TO LAST, wh Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Jim Collins is a student and teacher of enduring great companies — how they grow, how they attain superior performance, and how good companies can become great companies. Having invested over a decade of research into the topic, Jim has authored or co-authored four books, including the classic BUILT TO LAST, which has been a fixture on the Business Week best seller list for more than six years, and has been translated into 29 languages. His work has been featured in Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Harvard Business Review, and Fast Company.

Jim’s book, GOOD TO GREAT: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... And Others Don’t, attained long-running positions on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week best seller lists, has sold 3 million hardcover copies since publication and has been translated into 35 languages, including such languages as Latvian, Mongolian and Vietnamese.

His most recent book, HOW THE MIGHTY FALL: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, was published on May 19, 2009.

Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors. Jim holds degrees in business administration and mathematical sciences from Stanford University, and honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Colorado and the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.

Jim has served as a teacher to senior executives and CEOs at over a hundred corporations. He has also worked with social sector organizations, such as: Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Leadership Network of Churches, the American Association of K-12 School Superintendents, and the United States Marine Corps. In 2005 he published a monograph: Good to Great and the Social Sectors.

In addition, Jim is an avid rock climber and has made one-day ascents of the North Face of Half Dome and the Nose route on the South Face of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. He continues to climb at the 5.13 grade. ...more

Books by James C. Collins

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In

Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business Into an Enduring Great Company

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“When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you’ve had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.” — 129 likes

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.” — 106 likes

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