Not much or new content. Enforces time tested lessons of running businesses successfully. Well packaged and structured content

Content slightly dated as well for 2024 however the lessons are timeless

In "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" Collins tried to explain how a company can reach greatness. for this, his model which he choose after tough benchmarking research process consisted of 11 companies that were able to make the leap.
- To convert from good to great, there is no specific one turn but it's a process.
- Who are the great leaders? surprisingly they are not the noisy, outgoing and extremely extrovert type but they rather the calm, reserved, strong willing who aren't in any way arrogant.
- What are the steps that should be taken to make the convert from good to great?
here we can differentiate between type 4 leaders who start by "What" (vision and strategy) and then "Who" on the contrary, type 5 leaders who are the great ones start with choosing the best calipers the ones who will save time and effort and who are self-motivated and whose management is easy.
How to lead? what is the best way to lead? it's not your role to force an answer instead try to put great questions and let your team think with you and choose the best way. so heated discussions and debates are a healthy sign. you and your team should seek complete understanding of the situation. it's how you convert the available data to useful information.
There are 2 types of people, the fox who is cunning, devise myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog and there is the hedgehog who simplifies a complex world into a single organizing idea.
- Technology can't turn wrong people to the right ones and it's just a tool for greatness.
- Motivation: great leaders weren't motivated by fear of others to exceed them but fear of being left behind.
- Good to Great companies don't necessarily have a passion for customers or respect for the individual or quality or social responsibility or even the content of their values .but rather to strongly believe in their core of values.
You won't find a new miracle here but rather some good ideas or principles

I found this book interesting on two levels. One was the useful data that Collins and his team provide for what makes some companies truly great. These findings need not apply only to businesses--they can also apply to individuals, churches, etc.

The second level that interested me was all of the history of companies, such as Walgreens, Gillette, and Kroger. It was really neat to see how they got where they are today. Very useful!

I finally got around to reading Good to Great. It more or less lived up to the hype as being both inspirational and instructional. I just have three quick comments:

1. Like many business books, this would be better as a long magazine article instead of a book. The author, while deft, belabors point after point. While it was less true here than in some other business books, it's still longer than it needs to be.

2. A few of the ideas put forth -- e.g., the hedgehog concept, the three circles -- are brilliant observations, but, to my way of thinking, still require a certain kind of magic or special sauce that cannot be found by adhering to a set of principles. It's just too easy to identify and believe in the wrong Hedgehog concept and not know it until it's too late. I guess what I'm saying is that while the ideas are great, they can only go so far in helping put your business on the right track. Ingenuity, creativity, and a certain amount of luck will be needed too.

3. Don't read this on an iPhone. The charts and graphs are too small, and the software (in this case Nook, but I think all of the apps) didn't allow for enlarging the images.

But all in all, I'd still give this a very strong recommendation for anyone in a leadership role, or anyone who aspires to be in a leadership role

Read this years ago and recall it as quite worthwhile.

I would give it 31/2stars. Really insightful concepts. I liked how there was thorough research before presenting these ideas. Towards the end it started to become a little repetitive.

I love this short lesson from Jim Collin's Good to Great:

"Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems."

Finally!!! Uhhg, it took me forever to finish this book, but I finally knocked it out. This is an interesting book because some of the companies that are profiled in it are no longer in existence or are seriously struggling to stay afloat today. It is kind of amazing how much can change in 13 years. That said, this is a great read that should be read by everyone in business. I may be the last person on earth to have read it considering it was published in 2000.

The chapters did feel a little wordy to me, but all the sections were worth reading. I would probably recommend that you pick up a summary of the book, or read summaries at the end of each chapter and you should get the main takeaways from the book. Good stuff, but it could have been a substantially smaller book.

I was reluctant to buy in to a management/business book because mostly, I think they're just cash cows for publishers. But this book was different, smart in a way I didn't expect. I felt like I actually gained valuable insight into not only the organizations profiled in the book, but also into my own.

Collins matches an easy, flowing style with raw data and visuals that further clarify his points. Although I think some of his classifications of concepts are gimmicky (The Hedgehog Concept, the Doom Loop, etc), they are memorable and easy to understand.

Collins isn't reinventing the wheel, but probably he's doing something even harder here--revealing ideas so obvious we never even consider them anymore.

I think this book is an effective tool for managers and employees alike; anyone invested in taking their organization to a new level, transcending the power politics that plague so many industries and leaving behind the personality conflicts of people closed into small spaces...

This book is essentially a 10 year long study to find companies who were good for at least fifteen years, then something happened to make them explode to greatness. It's one of the most value-packed books I've ever read when it comes to building and managing companies. This is a must read for anyone interested in how the greatest companies in our era became like that and how to make your company go from mediocre to epic.

Jim Collins is absolutely the best narrator.

Main concepts to remember:
- Hedgehog concept: Better than anyone, interested in more than anything else, best paid- You need to spend time and energy to define you hedgehog.
- First who, then what
- Discipline is the key. Momentum is not created overnight. Slight edge concept here.
- Level 5 leadership: You being great is not enough, you caring for others make you and your company great
- Right people on the right seat, wrong people off the bus. You're ruining your and their time and life if you know a person is in wrong place, wrong seat. By hiring right people you don't have to motivate them, they are motivated by themselves and by their job /pay them well/.
- Technology is an accelerator, not a creator.

Reading goal of 2017: 12
- audible 6
- ebook 3
- book 3

There are many great reviews of this book that summarize its message in a few sentences, and that's one of the strengths of the book -- its messages are few, have memorable names for the concepts, and make sense. But in general, they can be boiled down to platitudes, and they mostly make common sense. Worrying is that rigor is applied to determine the causes of becoming great, yet causality isn't proved but implied. This reminds me of another book I read in business school that did the same kind of analysis but based on marketing and financial numbers. This kind of thing is done all the time (where's our book on greatness based on social media presense?).

Also cringeworthy are the great companies that have fallen from grace, specifically Circuit City and Fannie Mae. Seems to tell you that the environment has a big impact on greatness, at least more than I noticed in this book. (Hey, Porter!)

I listened to this on audio, and they actually do a great job for this kind of book. For one, the paper book has a number of tables and diagrams, and the narrator described them well. In addition, the book had a number of appendices, and gratefully the narrator didn't read them, but instead described them and gave examples of how they could be used. The version of the audiobook I listened to also had an extensive Q&A section at the end, answering some obvious questions that the book provoked (but not all well). These changes from pure narration of the book made this much more listenable than any other business audiobooks I've heard. On top of this, the narrator had an excitement as he read this -- it was like being at a sales presentation. It did keep the interest level up.

My test of a business book is whether I will change my actions based on the book, or if I have new things to think about. This one fails both tests. I'm not at a level in my organization or other groups that I have control enough to accomplish what is recommended. And, as I said, this was relatively common sensical. In summary, if you are in charge of hiring and/or strategic management of a group, this could be interesting. If you are a SME (and don't have your own cross country team), it's probably not worth your time - read the summaries and reviews instead.