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

by Jim Collins

Practical Discipline #1: When in doubt, don’t hire—keep looking.

No company can grow revenues consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company.

Practical Discipline #2: When you know you need to make a people change, act.

Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.

But how do you know when you know? Two key questions can help. First, if it were a hiring decision (rather than a “should this person get off the bus?” decision), would you hire the person again? Second, if the person came to tell you that he or she is leaving to pursue an exciting new opportunity, would you feel terribly disappointed or secretly relieved?

Practical Discipline #3: Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.

We uncovered three practical disciplines for being rigorous in people decisions: When in doubt, don’t hire—keep looking. (Corollary: A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.) When you know you need to make a people change, act. (Corollary: First be

sure you don’t simply have someone in the wrong seat.) Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. (Corollary: If you sell off your problems, don’t sell off your best people.)

Lead with questions, not answers.

The good-to-great leaders made particularly good use of informal meetings where they’d meet with groups of managers and employees with no script, agenda, or set of action items to discuss. Instead, they would start with questions like: “So, what’s on your mind?” “Can you tell me about that?” “Can you help me understand?” “What should we be worried about?” These non-agenda meetings became a forum where current realities tended to bubble to the surface.

Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

Engage in

dialogue and debate, not coercion.

Conduct autopsies, without blame.