Good to Great

Ramya

FT/05/RAM

Book Review of Good to Great

The Challenge

Jim Collins' previous book, Built to Last, was a defining management study of the nineties. It showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. What about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Book

Good to Great book is a must read for anyone who is in business or wants to start a new business. I was really impressed with the line

"Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice"

Two companies face the same challenge have the same information with them, yet the great company makes the conscious choice on how to handle the situation and how to use the data effectively.

"I will take responsibility for this bad decision. But we will all take responsibility for extracting the maximum learning from the tuition we have paid"

Responsibility is less important than the experience gained from the situation. Instead of dwelling on your mistakes, take responsibility, identify areas of improvement and go on.

"Those who built the good-to-great companies, however made as much use of "stop doing" lists as "to-do" lists"

It is easy to make the to-do list and check of things which have been completed. A don't do list requires dedication.

"The single biggest danger in business and life, other than the outright failure, is to be successful without being resolutely clear about why you are successful in the first place."

How you got to that position is as important as the position in which you are in i.e. understanding how you got to be a great company is just as important as being a great company.

The author identified 9 key elements that enabled them to maintain greatness for 15 years. Yes, one of them was leadership - but a different kind of leadership than most of us would expect. Collins indicates that we cannot move from good to great with leaders who have big egos. Instead, he suggests that those who want to be great leaders need to be self-effacing, quiet, and humble and perhaps shy. They also need to be willful and fearless.

Great companies find a way to avoid bureaucratic structure by establishing