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

Customer Reviews

Good to Great + consistent Optimal Thinking = Best
This book is a fascinating read! A study taken over five years began with twenty-eight corporations and revealed eleven that had made the leap from Good to Great. From this study, I gained an instant understanding of the role of humility in leadership. The primary ambition of great leaders is focused on the success of their company, not on themselves.

Collins advocates the Hedgehog Concept - a combination of discovering what you can be best in the world at (Optimal Thinking), what you are passionate about, and what drives your economic engine. Collins states that sustained disciplined action is primarily achieved by "fanatical adherence to the Hedgehog Concept and the willingness to shun opportunities that fall outside the three circles." So my question is: How do you identify the best? I recommend Optimal Thinking: How To Be Your Best Self by Dr. Rosalene Glickman as an adjunct to this powerful book to provide the mental resource to identify the best, optimize emotional and financial intelligence and create a corporate culture of optimization. From Good to Greatest to Best!"

Unwavering resolve to do what must be done
Unwavering resolve to do what must be done! Ah -- a characteristic of the Level 5 (Good to Great) leader, described in this well researched book that shows the reader what it takes to take a good company to greatness. Personal humility fortified with professional will gives Good to Great leaders the edge on their ego-driven counterparts. Collins makes many marvellous points, the first being that the RIGHT people are your most important asset. By rising above unrealistic optimism, confronting brutal facts and asking questions that lead to the greatest insights (optimal thinking), the leader moves his company to greatness. Good to Great leaders focus on the few things that have the greatest impact (optimal thinking). Collins won me when he said "One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal facts of reality." Good to Great leaders create a culture where the truth is heard, and where negative thinking is not degraded or scorned (optimal thinking). This book is a must read!

Well written and entertaining too
Good to Great is a comphrehensive research project, well written
and entertaining to read, Good to Great is a worthy successor to, and in the tradition of, Built to Last.