Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap...and others don't

I'm in the process of opening up a new business, and with this book on cd in hand - I have both my inspiration, and guidelines on not just how to do it - but how to *think* through the process of what I'm embarking upon. I wont beat the dead horse about what people have outlined - there's some awesome reviews here - and part of the reason I bought this in the first place. But what I personally found most interesting about this book on cd is the straightforward, no b.s. approach to evidence and support of just what makes great companies tick - and how they got there in the first place. Mr Collins even goes so far to provide many examples of this same exact strategy he's discovered being used successfully in companies - in anything from sports, small business, and even personal lives. This isn't so much a book on how to run a business, as it is a how to run your life and mind, and quite simply focus with passion on everything you do. From an outsider's perspective, those words at first seem obvious. But listening to the stories detailed throughout this book - it truly is inspiring to hear what works, and what doesnt in truly great individuals and lives who have made a difference, and have had fulfilling lives as well despite living 'below the radar' and understanding humility is something which comes naturally when you lead by your passions, not for everyone else's. A HIGHLY recommended read (or listen), and I can say this is one of the few books of this type which I will NOT be reselling - GO FIND YOUR OWN COPY!!! ;-)

This was recommended to me. WOW! After listening to it once I knew I had to play it again to get the details down pat. There is so much information to digest, even in this abridged version. I have played it about four times now, and when i head out I grab a CD for the car and plat a random chapter. I suggest listening in order the first time or two you listen to it. After all, we spend so much time in cars we may as well make the best of the time.The material covers many point of many companies and brings out what enabled the best to become the best. After finishing the CDs I wondered why I was not told about this in college when going for my Business degree. Some of the material is dated, like when they tell you how awesome Circuit City is. However you can use the same material and understand why CC is no longer around.If you are motivated to do great things inside your company this will give you ideas to determine the others around you who feel the same way, and how to identify the points in your company that will make you great and those that will delay growth.

I am listening to this book for a college course and it is really helpful. It is wonderful to hear empirical findings to questions of how to create a great company from a good one. Easy to follow.

Jim Collins effort is truly thought provoking. In step-by-step fashion he walks you through the key steps the good companies took to become great.His findings are based on mountains of data and thousands of interviews, yet he breaks it down into bitesize pieces and explains each important element in the G2G process. Then at the end of the CD program he explains the entire process in three simple categories.I found his revelation of the Hedgehog Concept the most useful: What can you be the best at? What drives your economic engine? And what are you passionate about? This simple concept helped me straighten the path of my business out and let me know what I need to get rid of.If your business has plateaued and you are wondering what you can do to take it to the next level, this program is for you.

The material presented from Jim Collins is profoundly well organized and based on REAL research and information. He is very candid about what the facts do and don't support. This "book" is not a blah, blah, blah management THEORY based on the THEORY about THEORY. Jim's dissertation is based on facts, and the how those facts apply to useful truth. In this regard, I believe Good to Great presents a very solid body of information beneficial to anyone interested in doing better buisiness. And, it's very enjoyable too.

Great study and message about what makes good companies great. Interesting that many of these have failed since the book was written. Growth can only go so far, and as Kodak knows you can't survive on photo film alone.

I find it useful to take the best of the best, and overlay concepts to find commonality. So what should budding leaders do? First read Stephen Covey's "Principle Centered Leadership"... twice. Then buy this audio book, and pull out the level 5 leader attributes. You won't find many inconsistencies in Covey's high intellectualized theory, and Collins' research.Dave Day

Great CD, if you are starting or building a business you want to listen to this CD.

Excelente.

merece la pena escucharlo

There were many business ideas that I knew came from Jim Collins (like the BHAG – the Big Hairy Audacious Goal, although that was from his previous book Built to Last). Reading, or more accurately listening to the audiobook of Good to Great, I can place quite a few more unattributed concepts, such as “get the right people on the bus”.This book was published in 2001, based on extensive research that started in the mid 1990s. Collins wished to identify companies that had been mediocre – had average or worse financial returns for a substantial period of time (15 years) which then achieved sustained exceptional results – which were quantified at outperforming the stockmarket by a factor of 3 over those 15 years. Just 11 publically quoted companies (out of over satisfied the criteria, and became the subject of this analysis, along with some comparator companies. Some of the companies are likely to be known to the British reader, but most, I think, are not.I’m not going to give a summary of the book, as I think that this has been covered pretty well already. I pick out just one concept – the “hedgehog concept”, a reference to Isaiah Berlin’s humorous categorisation of thinkers into “foxes” – who are skilled in many things – and “hedgehogs”, who only know how to do one thing, but who do it really well. In the context of business strategy, Collins sees the advantage of having a good hedgehog concept to be compelling, and a necessary feature of his good to great companies.There are many critics of Collins, ranging from academics who don’t think he can be academically sound as he didn’t produce this work within the confines of a university business school, to so-called business experts who think that their advice is more valuable, although based on nothing like the same rigorous approach.I think that this is a brilliant work, but my criticism is this. Collins states something to the effect that the trick to financial success is to have an entirely undiversified investment strategy and to get that investment absolutely right. While he had said, earlier in the book, that he thought that 15 years was long enough to eliminate luck as a factor – no one can be lucky for 15 years, can they? – it doesn’t seem impossible that if you do get that “hedgehog concept, undiversified, do the one most profitable thing and do it well” decision right, that luck might last for 15 years before changing markets lead to the need for a new “hedgehog concept”. It might also explain why some of his good to greats, like Gillette, struggled after changing conditions meant that that their original hedgehog concept no longer worked, and to the accusation of ill-discipline when internal dissension arose while trying to re-establish such a guiding principle. Maybe his good to greats were lucky after all? I would certainly not eliminate the value of luck, although I’m always reminded of Gary Player’s observation to the effect “the more I practise, the luckier I get”.That having been said, I found Collins’ arguments to be compelling, but that is not necessarily to say that the same strategies and factors that worked from the late 1960s to the later 1990s would work again today; things may have changed. Nevertheless, this does look like a good starting point for anyone seeking to raise a company’s performance – applied intelligently and with due regard to the context, it’s hard to think that most of these strategies could do anything but good – so long as you don’t all adopt a hedgehog concept that turns out to be flawed!I find Jim Collins a very engaging, enthusiastic and credible reader of his own, abridged, work, and shall look out some of his other audio-books. If I had a technical criticism of the CD set it’s that the track referencing system is not consistent across the 5 CDs in the box, so that getting the tracks into my mp3 player (phone) proved a little tricky, and I had to delete the initial attempt and then redo so that the tracks were in the correct order. The upside of this was, finally, to master playlists – always been an “album” kind for guy so far.Recommended – wish I’d read this book (or listened to it) years ago.

Thought provoking, challenging, inspirational. VERY well researched rationale behind those US businesses that have consistently outperformed the markets and their peers. Dispels many myths about what makes companies truly great. Explains clearly what the common distinguishing features are to success and goes a long way to getting across why those features are so important. As a business coach, when I give this to my clients I just know they'll come away from listening to this having been inspired and motivated. It's also easy to listen to Jim Collins, he makes even the research sections truly come alive.

What a great listen. Jim can be a little annoying in the ear occasionally but it's great to hear the author read his own work.