Search the Products Store
Search the Book Store
clog dancing Book Store Index
Privacy Policy
Copyright Notice
Home
|
|
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't |
Author: Jim Collins
Published: 2001-10 |
List price: $29.99
Our price: $18.87
|
Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: January 06th, 2009 12:23:38 AM
|
|
|
Customer comments on this selection.
 Collins Review
Extremely well written. The valuable information from Collin's Good to Great is useful not only in a business but also in one's personal life. A must buy!
 please burn every copy you can find
Please google critical review of G2G before reading. There are major problems with the "research" presented. Check out Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan" for some insight into what really makes a company great. The answer; no one really knows. It's all random.
Business books are nothing but fads and fashion. Read, borrow a couple of ideas, then throw them in the trash when you are done. G2G became required reading where I work and in my view has nearly destroyed the company. It was, and still is, considered the Gospel of business. Prior to G2G we grew from zero to $120M in 10 years. In the 7 years after G2G we are down to $60M. (Still profitable, thankfully, but boring.) Life was much more fun before we got hedge-hogged.
Avoid at all costs, unless you are a fox and read it to learn what the hedge hogs are thinking.
 Pretty great, if a little dated
I picked up this book from the bed and breakfast bookshelf while on vacation. It's not a book I normally would have chosen to read on vacation, but it was well written and was surprisingly engaging for the topic. It's a study of companies that were good companies for awhile (at least 15 years), then became great companies (outperforming the stock market by at least 3x over at least 15 years). What they found in the eleven companies that met the criteria were some interesting and at times counterintuitive tendencies.
LEADERSHIP All the companies had what Collins calls "Level 5 leaders," or leaders with a rare combination of drive and ambition but a complete lack of ego. These leaders are humble, quick to credit others, and are driven by a desire to create something bigger than themselves as opposed to a monument to themselves. These leaders shun the cult of personality and are very rarely rock-star CEOs. In fact, Collins found no correlation between CEO pay and good-to-great companies.
WHO OVER WHAT Good-to-great companies first concern themselves with who they bring on board before decide what needs to be done. The right team can accomplish anything, but even the best game plan will fail if it doesn't have the right people to implement it.
CONFRONT THE BRUTAL FACTS The g2g companies had a culture of optimistic realism. They had a culture of trust and honesty, where people were empowered to do their jobs and debate was encouraged. Goals were set high, but they never lost sight of the situation on the ground.
THE HEDGEHOG CONCEPT refers to a parable in which a hedgehog constantly foils a fox by repeatedly doing the same simple thing--being a hedgehog. In business, it simply means finding your company's core competency. What can it be best in the world at? What can it make money at? What is it passionate about? Great companies find and stick to that one thing.
GOOD TO GREAT also describes the culture of discipline in each company, the adaption to new technology, and the cycles of positive and negative momentum that companies find themselves in. All of these elements work together to create the leap to greatness over time. It's not a singular breakthrough.
Scattered throughout the book are great case studies, inspirational stories and insightful quotes. My biggest criticism of the book, or observation, is that a couple of the eleven great companies (Fannie Mae and Circuit City) either forgot what made them great or weren't as sustainable as Collins thought seven years ago. That aside, this was an easy read full of a lot of good insight.
Captivating for a Business Study
Very good research and well written. Somewhat dated since 3 of these companies are in trouble today, but the others are still among the best.
Timely principles needed during this economic crisis
Jim Collins' study of business core values, principles and success concepts was expected to be timeless, even if the companies in the book were not. This is never more true than in the later half of 2008 where we see time after time companies missing the mark on these concepts and faltering badly.
I suggest that Congress, the auto makers, unions and especially Wall Street read carefully, no study the concepts in Good to Great. Had Fannie Mae continued the principles it displayed in this study, the housing crisis could have had a leader in future prosperity rather than a goat in the middle of the mess.
Take the time to study these principles of business carefully and not only follow them, live them. Jim Collins has created a book that is more than good to great, its Built to Last!
|
|
Our clog dancing book picks:
|
|
Search the clog dancing Products Store
LCS Amazon Store 2.5 © 2009
|