Product Description

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10
• Released on: 2001-10-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 300 pages

Amazon.com Review
Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly
In what Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last he wrote with Jerry Porras, this worthwhile effort explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team (at his management research firm) read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. That Collins is able to distill the findings into a cogent, well-argued and instructive guide is a testament to his writing skills. After establishing a definition of a good-to-great transition that involves a 10-year fallow period followed by 15 years of increased profits, Collins's crew combed through every company that has made the Fortune 500 (approximately 1,400) and found 11 that met their criteria, including Walgreens, Kimberly Clark and Circuit City. At the heart of the findings about these companies' stellar successes is what Collins calls the Hedgehog Concept, a product or service that leads a company to outshine all worldwide competitors, that drives a company's economic engine and that a company is passionate about. While the companies that achieved greatness were all in different industries, each engaged in versions of Collins's strategies. While some of the overall findings are counterintuitive (e.g., the most effective leaders are humble and strong-willed rather than outgoing), many of Collins's perspectives on running a business are amazingly simple and commonsense. This is not to suggest, however, that executives at all levels wouldn't benefit from reading this book; after all, only 11 companies managed to figure out how to change their B grade to an A on their own.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Collins is coauthor of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (1994), the widely heralded book that was the result of a six-year research project conducted by Collins and Jerry Porras. They identified 18 companies that met their rigorous standard for long-term performance. They looked for companies that had outperformed the stock market by a factor of 15 starting from 1926. Then they went about the task of identifying what these companies had in common. Now Collins turns his attention to companies that have made the transition from "good to great." This time the findings are backed by five years of research and data analysis. Starting with every company that ever appeared in the Fortune 500, Collins identifies 11 companies that had 15-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market when, after a transition point, they then demonstrated cumulative returns of at least three times the market over the next 15 years. Collins then looked for similarities among the companies. What he found would both surprise and fascinate anyone involved in management. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Good service and good product
Book came on time and very clean. Few writings here and there which was already mentioned. Book is in excellent condition. Thank you.

A great book, but try not to fight the examples.
Jim Collins and his team did a great job of breaking down both business and leaders into factors that helped make them successful. Thought Collins markets his book as a business book I believe, like those of Covey, the theories in this book will serve you well in both business and personal aspects of your life. This book was actually used as a text in my MBA studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University's Silberman College of Buisness, a nationally top ranking entrepreneurship school. As such I've engaged in many hours of discussion with both students and seasoned professionals about the merits and short-comings of this book.

First, I'll start with where it comes up short since everyone loves that and I'd prefer to finish on a positive note anyway. Some people feel that Collins's findings just aren't possible to implement in real world work environments. Others argue that most of this material just doesn't apply to anyone that's not a senior executive in the organization. Last, and my favorite, is the rational that success, especially in these companies, is random and luck based. I contend they're all wrong, and I'll tell you why. The only criticism of this book I do accept is Collins's criteria for a successful company is purely financial, which I don't agree with, but he does address hi s reasoning right at the beginning. I understand why he had to do it, but I still don't agree with it.

To those who argue Collins' methods are not implementable in the real world I say quit arguing the metaphors and learn from the principles. Try not to get stuck duplicating the examples Collins uses in the book, they are just examples. Read between the lines and just pull out what he's trying to say... "first who...", "The Hedgehog Concept", "The Flywheel", and, if you have the audiobook, pay close attention to the student question in the epilogue. These are simple concepts that can have a great impact on you, your organization, and your career. I contend that each and every one of the theories in this book can be implemented in business at all levels, not just at the top, as well as everyday life. I believe you can be a level five leader in life, not just in business. The book "Leadership and Self-Deception" by The Arbinger Institute is a great book to emphasize this point.

And finally, for anyone that feels success is random and/or we can't break it down into a set of rules or principles I'd recommend reading Taleb's "The Black Swan", (a great book btw) which might make you feel better about yourself. I'd also recommend "Outliers" by Gladwell, another book which does in-depth research into success. Look specifically at the 10,000 hour rule and see how well it fits with Collins's Flywheel concept.

Now for the pros of this book. There are too many to list. Collins's principles of level five leadership, the fly wheel, the doom loop, build-up to break-through, etc., etc., and so on, and so on are all very good points. Again, these principles don't just apply to business, they also apply to life. I'm currently a technology marketing professional, but not a sr. executive. Build-up to break-through and the flywheel concept are just two great ways I've made a difference in my organization from the bottom up. I'm also an entrepreneur and own my own business and one of the best things I found about Good To Great was The Hedgehog concept and how it applies to Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule.
Overall a good read with great theories.

As always the metaphors and examples can be argued until you're blue in the face, but if you attempt to do that then you've already missed the point.

Interesting look at leadership. CD media great for long drives.
I read the book a while back and was surprised to find parallels to what my dad and uncle (partners in a small business) experienced in the late 70s/early 80s. I knew they did something special, but it was especially gratifying to see it documented and quasi-proven with multiple industry observations on larger scales. I purchased the CD media so that my dad could enjoy it as well.