Good to Great Quotes

“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.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people “have their say” so that they could “buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Yes, the world is changing, and will continue to do so. But that does not mean we should stop the search for timeless principles. Think of it this way: While the practices of engineering continually evolve and change, the laws of physics remain relatively fixed. I like to think of our work as a search for timeless principles—”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Charisma can be as much a liability as an asset, as the strength of your leadership personality can deter people from bringing you the brutal facts.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Discover your core values and purpose beyond just making money (core ideology) and combine this with the dynamic of preserve the core/stimulate progress.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“It didn’t matter how bleak the situation or how stultifying their mediocrity, they all maintained unwavering faith that they would not just survive, but prevail as a great company. And yet, at the same time, they became relentlessly disciplined at confronting the most brutal facts of their current reality.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts. The good-to-great companies operated in accordance with this principle, and the comparison companies generally did not.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“That’s what makes death so hard—unsatisfied curiosity. —BERYL MARKHAM,”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“lasting transformations from good to great follow a general pattern of buildup followed by breakthrough.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“That said, however, we did notice one particularly provocative form of economic insight that every good-to-great company attained, the notion of a single “economic denominator.” Think about it in terms of the following question: If you could pick one and only one ratio—profit per x (or, in the social sector, cash flow per x)—to systematically increase over time, what x would have the greatest and most sustainable impact on your economic engine? We learned that this single question leads to profound insight into the inner workings of an organization’s economics.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Throughout our research, we were continually reminded of the “hardiness” research studies done by the International Committee for the Study of Victimization. These studies looked at people who had suffered serious adversity—cancer patients, prisoners of war, accident victims, and so forth—and survived. They found that people fell generally into three categories: those who were permanently dispirited by the event, those who got their life back to normal, and those who used the experience as a defining event that made them stronger.53 The good-to-great companies were like those in the third group, with the “hardiness factor.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“You get the best people, you build them into the best managers in the industry, and you accept the fact that some of them will be recruited to become CEOs of other companies.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Then it began to dawn on us: There was no miracle moment. Although it may have looked like a single-stroke breakthrough to those peering in from the outside, it was anything but that to people experiencing transformation from within. Rather, it was a quiet, deliberate process of figuring out what needed to be done to create the best future results and then simply taking those steps, one after the other, turn by turn of the flywheel. After pushing on that flywheel in a consistent direction over an extended period of time, they'd inevitably hit a point of breakthrough.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“We find out who they are by asking them why they made decisions in their life. The answers to these questions give us insight into their core values.33”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“A key psychology for leading from good to great is the Stockdale Paradox: Retain absolute faith that you can and 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. UNEXPECTED”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“The good-to-great companies built a consistent system with clear constraints, but they also gave people freedom and responsibility within the framework of that system. They hired self-disciplined people who didn’t need to be managed, and then managed the system, not the people.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Characteristics of the Council 1. The council exists as a device to gain understanding about important issues facing the organization. 2. The Council is assembled and used by the leading executive and usually consists of five to twelve people. 3. Each Council member has the ability to argue and debate in search of understanding, not from the egoistic need to win a point or protect a parochial interest. 4. Each Council member retains the respect of every other Council member, without exception. 5. Council members come from a range of perspectives, but each member has deep knowledge about some aspect of the organization and/or the environment in which it operates. 6. The Council includes key members of the management team but is not limited to members of the management team, nor is every executive automatically a member. 7. The Council is a standing body, not an ad hoc committee assembled for a specific project. 8. The Council meets periodically, as much as once a week or as infrequently as once per quarter. 9. The Council does not seek consensus, recognizing that consensus decisions are often at odds with intelligent decisions. The responsibility for the final decision remains with the leading executive. 10. The Council is an informal body, not listed on any formal organization chart or in any formal documents. 11. The Council can have a range of possible names, usually quite innocuous. In the good-to-great companies, they had benign names like Long-Range Profit Improvement Committee, Corporate Products Committee, Strategic Thinking Group, and Executive Council.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“because expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“certain: You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts. The good-to-great companies operated”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“years. What separates people, Stockdale taught me, is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life. In”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts. Indeed,”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“The good-to-great companies displayed two distinctive forms of disciplined thought. The first, and the topic of this chapter, is that they infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality. (The second, which we will discuss in the next chapter, is that they developed a simple, yet deeply insightful, frame of reference for all decisions.) When,”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“technology is important—you can’t remain a laggard and hope to be great. But technology by itself is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline.”
― James C. Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

“Good-to-great management teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind decisions, regardless of parochial interests.”
― Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't