Business · 02

Good to Great

Jim Collins

Great companies put the right people first, then push one clear focus until each gain builds on the last.

Five questions this book answers, each in a short piece. Read them, or listen as every word lights up.

Start with question one Buy the book

The five questions

In the order the book argues them.

First who

Many hands on the rim

The leaders Collins studied chose their people before they chose a destination. People who value their colleagues have a reason to stay when the direction changes.

Ten of the eleven chief executives at the turning points came from inside their companies.

How can you build a team that thrives without a star leader when its direction may have to change?Choose people who can change the planJim Collins argues that adaptable teams begin with capable colleagues, careful staffing decisions and ambition directed beyond the leader.7 min listen

The honest reading

A hand's width

After all that pushing, the line has moved a hand's width. Collins asks for hope that can face an answer like that, and for a team where it is safe to prove the leader wrong.

Admiral Jim Stockdale, imprisoned for eight years during the Vietnam War, kept faith that he would prevail without knowing when release might come.

When the facts threaten your plans, how do you stay hopeful while making it safe for others to prove you wrong?Hope that can face an unwelcome answerFacts become useful when they can change a decision. Collins connects that openness with confidence that does not depend on invented deadlines.7 min listen

One direction

The first full turn

Walgreens ran more than five hundred restaurants, a profitable business. It left food service to put its future in convenient drugstores.

Pushed the same way every time, the line comes around to meet itself.

With limited time and money, how do you choose work worth becoming exceptional at and know which profitable opportunities to refuse?When profitable work is the wrong workA useful focus joins exceptional potential, sound economics and genuine care, then changes which activities receive time and money.7 min listen

Turn by turn

No single push

A heavy wheel takes repeated pushes to gather speed, and later pushes benefit from earlier ones. No single push explains the momentum.

From outside it can look like a sudden breakthrough. At the rim it is the same push, many times over.

How can a team deliver reliable results without smothering initiative when new technology and demands for quick wins keep pulling it off course?Give initiative somewhere to buildClear responsibility, selective technology and visible results can let people exercise judgment while making each improvement support the next.7 min listen

Clock building

It keeps turning

Collins wants an organization that keeps learning and acting without its current leader. He calls this clock building.

A leader can want the next generation to do better even if the credit goes elsewhere.

How do you build success that outlasts you without freezing what works today or treating growth and money as the whole point?What should survive you?Lasting success needs successors who understand the work, a purpose worth keeping, and methods that can change.7 min listen

Seen from the yard

Start with the first push

Start with question one Buy the book

Published by HarperBusiness. Cover shown to identify the book. Jim Collins drawn as an editorial caricature.