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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't | 
 enlarge | Author: Jim Collins
Publisher: Collins
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
Buy Used: $8.47
You Save: $19.03 (69%)
New (110) Collectible (36) from $11.40
Avg. Customer Rating:  667 reviews
Sales Rank: 71
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 300
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0066620996
Dewey Decimal Number: 658
EAN: 9780066620992
ASIN: 0066620996
Publication Date: October 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Light DJ wear. Occasional interior highlighting. Ships next day. No APO/FPO orders.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com's Best of 2001
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
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: - Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
- The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
- A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
- The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 662 more reviews...
 Look at the results of the 'great' companies May 7, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Let's see the results of these great companies...did they even keep up with the general market since this book was publish...no...not only that many are doing abysmally such as Circuit City and Fannie Mae. Even though Jim Collins stood firm against the idea of a 'new economy' and he wisely advocates against high-profile CEOs and golden parachutes, he didn't see the massive bubble that these companies were a part of and that attributed to their 'greatness'. The empirical analysis wasn't really empirical at all and failed to see the hidden assumptions in the research. I recommend potential buyers spend money on a good economics text or course, not on this overrated junk bond of a book.
 Great Resource May 6, 2008
I read this book along with its companion piece for non-profit organizations. It is filled with good, practical advice that can be applied to almost any organization. It's also a very easy read.
7 years, apparently Jim Collins understood "built to last" April 26, 2008
I have owned this book on CD since '03 and just this year purchased the hardcover edition. Through his teams research and analysis, Jim Collins has constructed a potentially timeless classic for business people and leaders. GTG will add to your professional talents, it is inspiring and compelling for those of us that border on obsession with our professional lives. This book has helped me to hire and fire. I revisit it regularly for inspiration. GTG is truly an investment in your own future. If you can apply the techniques written about here you will see a difference in the quality of the life for you and those that you work with daily. The simple concepts of first who, then what and the hedgehog, bring a simplistic and valuable way to approach our day to day challenges. Those very simple core values of GTG leaders are easy to articulate but very difficult to practice and execute consistently. Once mastered they are very powerful and rewarding. Time spent with GTG will certainly provide a return. Don't wait any longer. Your thoughts and opinions are always welcome.
Good To Great Is The Best Business Book That I Have Ever Read!! April 21, 2008
This book does a great job of making business interesting. It literally reads like a novel. I couldn't put it down, even though I just completed it for the third time. Although I do not subscribe to it in totality, its concepts are based upon thousands of research hours and are well presented with plenty of examples from the famous companies included in the book. I have handed it out to the management team of a recently purchased company and have no doubt that at the very least it will stimulate strategic thinking. I recommend it highly!
 Well presented analysis April 20, 2008
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Jim Collins is a business professor and author of three previous business books. Good to Great seeks to answer the questions, "Is it possible for a good company with an ingrained culture of average performance to become truly great?" and, if so, "how?"
Indeed, Collins argues, the answer is "yes," (hence the name oft the book) and then provides seven characteristics of companies that make such a transition. After engaging in a thorough analysis of several years worth of Fortune 500 companies (the research is explained in the first chapter and several indices), Collins identified a handful of companies that made such a leap (in markets average or difficult markets) and contrasted them with nearly identical companies that remained average.
Collins argues that good-to-great companies begin with disciplined people--putting a highly self-differentiated person as the CEO (or its equivalent), and then hiring other self-differentiated people/firing weak or aggressive people/placing strong employees in places with the most growth potential. Good-to-great companies also practiced disciplined thought in that they came to terms with difficult facts while maintaining optimism and followed a business plan with a limited focus. Finally, these companies displayed disciplined action in that they were self-disciplined (no bureaucratic policies or carrot-and-stick policies were needed to force productivity), and used technology wisely to keep within their narrow focus (not adopting technology for technology's sake or allowing its siren song to change the narrow business plan). Finally, Collins argues that success was difficult for these good-to-great companies to come by at first, but then mild successes yielded moderate successes; moderate successes yielded good successes; good successes yielded wild success to the point that the organization seemed to be on autopilot.
I found Collin's arguments compelling and I enjoyed his writing style. He presented concepts in memorable ways and presented stories to illustrate his points. I also appreciated his constant continual comparison of specific good-to-great companies with always-good companies (and even declining companies). It should be noted that this reader is not a businessman and some of the jargon was lost on me, but nevertheless the use of jargon didn't prevent me from understanding his main points.
It should also be noted that Collins has written a follow-up monograph for those in not-for-profit organizations. This reader found that there were certain aspects of this business book that didn't loan itself well to church work or work in other social sector organizations. The monograph is called "Good to Great and the Social Sector"
Recommended.
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