Saturday, December 02, 2006

Good to Great

Good to Great has been on the bestseller list for more than a year with more than 2.5 million hardcover copies sold. Jim Collins co-authored another book with Jerry Porras called Built to Last. Built to Last examines companies that have survived a long time and continue to prospers.

Good to Great look at companies that were average and then become great. What is the definition of Great. Great is exceptional financial performance in the stock market. Jim Collin and his research team examined the records of publicly available financial information. Hence the companies are all on the NYSE or New York Stock Exchange. The exceptional stock price increase must be sustained for more than 15 years. Good is the enemy of Great. Because most companies are good enough, there is no motivation to become Great. The book relate 5 key points that good to great companies have.
1. Level 5 leadership where the leader/CEO has a strong ego for the organization and is humble.
2. First Who...Then What is having the right people in the organization then figure out what to do.
3. Confront the brutal Facts i.e. confronting business realities.
4. The Hedgehog Concept is keeping things simple. The hedgehog knows only one big thing in times of trouble, the fox knows many thing.
5. Technology Accelerators where technology is used to enable the business rather than the be all end all of the business.

Jim Collins has a website www.jimcollins.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very interesting this one,Booklover.Keep on posting.

BookLover said...

BT, thanks for the encouragement. My hairs stand reading your ghost story. You should compile this into True Ghost Stories, Cabin Crews - Beware!