Image: Good to Great by Len Lantz (CC BY-NC-ND)
Synopsis: Len's Star Rating: 10 out of 10. An exceptional book on the principles and practices of highly successful companies and their leaders.
BY LEN LANTZ, MD, author of unJoy / 6.7.2024; No. 121
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Star Rating – 10 out of 10
Rating guide: 1 = horrible, 5 = average and 10 = wow
Author
Jim Collins
About the author
Jim Collins is an educator, researcher, advisor, and author of several bestselling books, with over 10 million copies sold worldwide. Forbes selected him in 2017 as one of the “100 Greatest Living Business Minds.” He achieved his BS in Mathematics at Stanford University and his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 1995, Jim Collins founded a management laboratory, The Good to Great Project, where his team conducts research and provides consultative support to CEOs and their leadership teams.
General description
Good to Great is a book on the common principles, strategies, and leadership approaches that a very select group of companies used to improve themselves from mediocre performance to genuinely remarkable outcomes. Author Jim Collins and his team systematically selected and methodically evaluated companies that appeared on the Fortune 500 from 1965 to 1995. Out of 1,435 companies, they narrowed the list of “good-to-great” companies down to just 11, and they also selected comparison companies that were similar but never made the leap to greatness. Good to Great is the product of what was learned from extensive analysis of these companies and standardized interviews of their leaders. In this book, the author distills what they learned down to several unexpected findings (what’s in the “black box”) that help explain how the companies achieved greatness.
Unique and most important aspects
Good to Great is a book that has made the top of many people’s lists, from the best business book, to the best leadership book, to the best management book. Good to Great contains so much important, original, relevant, and clever content.
I found Good to Great to be a simply brilliant book. Author Jim Collins demonstrated some of his own Level 5 leadership characteristics as he shared his approaches to working with his research team, his ownership of limitations, and his practice of assigning credit to his team members for their contributions, rather than claiming others’ success for himself. While the book is over 20 years old, I found its principles to be as relevant today as when it was first published in 2001.
As I read Good to Great, I couldn’t help but wonder how the author found as many answers as he did. One reason might be his strength in asking the opposite question and using the process of inversion in his investigations and reasoning. For example, he asked, “How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?” Most people do not even consider thinking this way. Even in the preface, he mentioned that he went through a thought experiment: “How much would someone have to pay me not to publish Good to Great?” When he got to one hundred million dollars, Mr. Collins stopped thinking about the question. He concluded, “I’m a teacher at heart. As such, it is impossible for me to imagine not sharing what we’ve learned with students around the world.” Important features of this book include:
The attributes of Level 5 leaders
The mindset of “the window and the mirror” in Level 5 leaders.
The approach of getting the “right people on the bus” (first who, then what)
The Stockdale Paradox: “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.”
The Hedgehog Concept with three intersecting dimensions, the “three circles”
What you can (and cannot) be the best in the world at
What drives your economic engine
What you are deeply passionate about
Maintaining a culture of discipline
The use of technology accelerators
Contrasting the flywheel effect versus the doom loop
Tying concepts of good-to-great and built-to-last
The importance of building “red flag” mechanisms
The rationale for creating a “stop doing” list
Best quotes
“We believe that almost any organization can substantially improve its stature and performance, perhaps even become great, if it conscientiously applies the framework of ideas we’ve uncovered.”
“The good-to-great companies were not, by and large, in great industries, and some were in terrible industries. In no case do we have a company that just happened to be sitting on the nose cone of a rocket when it took off. Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.”
“If we have cracked the code on the question of good to great, we should have something of value to any type of organization. Good schools might become great schools. Good newspapers might become great newspapers. Good churches might become great churches. Good government agencies might become great agencies. And good companies might become great companies.”
“It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious—but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not to themselves… Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.”
“Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.”
“The main point is to first to get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take the company from good to great.”
“The good-to-great companies probably sound like tough places to work—and they are… But they’re not ruthless cultures, they’re rigorous cultures. And the distinction is crucial.”
“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led—yes. But not tightly managed.”
“Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.”
“Indeed, for those of you with a strong, charismatic personality, it is worthwhile to consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset… You can overcome the liabilities of having charisma, but it does require conscious attention.”
“The key, then, lies not in better information, but in turning information into information that cannot be ignored.”
“To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.”
“‘Crawl, walk, run’ can be a very effective approach, even during times of rapid and radical technological change.”
“Why did the good-to-great companies have a substantially higher success rate with acquisitions, especially major acquisitions?... They used acquisitions as an accelerator of flywheel momentum, not a creator of it.”
Who would enjoy this book?
Readers looking for a book that explores and explains the people and strategies of wildly successful US companies are likely to enjoy Good to Great.
Who would not enjoy this book?
Readers interested in a simple recipe for business success are unlikely to enjoy Good to Great.
Conclusion
Good to Great is an exceptional book on the principles and practices of highly successful companies and their leaders.