This book by Jim Collins is one of the most successful books to be found in the "Business" section of your local megabookstore, and given how it purports to tell you how to take a merely good company and make it great, it's not difficult to see why that might be so. Collins and his crack team of researchers say they swam through stacks of business literature in search of info on how to pull this feat off, and came up with a list of great companies that illustrate some concepts central to the puzzle. They also present for each great company what they call a "comparison company," which is kind of that company with a goatee and a much less impressive earnings record. The balance of the book is spent expanding on pithy catch phrases that describe the great companies, like "First Who, Then What" or "Be a Hedgehog" or "Grasp the Flywheel, not the Doom Loop." No, no, I'm totally serious.

I've got several problems with this book, the biggest of which stem from fundamentally viewpoints on how to do research. Collin's brand of research is not my kind. It's not systematic, it's not replicable, it's not generalizable, it's not systematic, it's not free of bias, it's not model driven, and it's not collaborative. It's not, in short, scientific in any way. That's not to say that other methods of inquiry are without merit --the Harvard Business Review makes pretty darn good use of case studies, for example-- but way too often Collins's great truths seemed like square pegs crammed into round holes, because a round hole is what he wants. For example, there's no reported search for information that disconfirms his hypotheses. Are there other companies that don't make use of a Culture of Discipline (Chapter 6, natch) but yet are still great according to Collins's definition? Are there great companies that fail to do some of the things he says should make them great? The way that the book focuses strictly on pairs of great/comparison companies smacks of confirmatory information bias, which is a kink in the human mind that drives us to seek out and pay attention to information that confirms our pre-existing suppositions and ignore information that fails to support them.

Relatedly, a lot of the book's themes and platitudes strike me as owing their popularity to the same factors that make the horoscope or certain personality tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator so popular: they're so general and loosely defined that almost anyone can look at that and not only say that wow, that make sense, and I've always felt the same way! This guy and me? We're geniuses! The chapter about "getting the right people on the bus" that extols the virtue of hiring really super people is perhaps the most obvious example. Really, did anyone read this part and think "Oh, man. I've been hiring half retarded chimps. THAT'S my problem! I should hire GOOD people!" Probably not, and given that Collins doesn't go into any detail about HOW to do this or any of his other good to great pro tips, I'm not really sure where the value is supposed to be.

It also irked me that Good to Great seems to try and exist in a vacuum, failing to relate its findings to any other body of research except Collins's other book, Built to Last. The most egregious example of this is early on in Chapter 2 where Collins talks about his concept of "Level 5 Leadership," which characterizes those very special folks who perch atop a supposed leadership hierarchy. The author actually goes into some detail describing Level 5 leaders, but toward the end of the chapter he just shrugs his figurative shoulders and says "But we don't know how people get to be better leaders. Some people just are." Wait, what? People in fields like Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Organizational Development have been studying, scientifically, what great leaders do and how to do it for decades. We know TONS about how to become a better leader. There are entire industries built around it. You would think that somebody on the Good to Great research team may have done a cursory Google search on this.

So while Good to Great does have some interesting thoughts and a handful of amusing or even fascinating stories to tell about the companies it profiles (I liked, for example, learning about why Walgreens opens so many shops in the same area, even to the point of having stores across the street from each other in some cities), ultimately it strikes me as vague generalities and little to no practical information about how to actually DO anything to make your company great.

Jim Collins uses a systematic approach to look in depth into these companies and see what really makes them great. With that said, there are a couple companies that should either be reevaluated or may have not “keep up with the times”. Case in point, Circuit City & Fannie Mae. Though business is volatile and anything can happen but with as much analysis as his team should have done, there should have been some sort of “take away” from this. The book has many one liners that make remembering key points easier. Using his criteria for the “good to great selection process” makes his data and analysis much more substantial then someone just spouting what they “feel” makes a great company.

This is still, from my point of view, a great book to read as there are many things that are very useful. Greatness takes time to mold and create and doesn’t happen over night. What I took as some of the best advice, “…every good-to-great transformation followed the same basic pattern – accumulating momentum, turn by turn of the flywheel – until buildup transformed into breakthrough.” The book is filled with many motivational and good forms of advice to follow which can in fact help drive a good company to greatness. All in all, I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the art of driving growth in a business and read about the same from a historical analysis of great companies.

A five year research study dedicated to analyzing the results of its own sampling bias without realizing it and puffed up with so much unnecessary fluff that the essence of the book could have been distilled on the front cover in a few bullet points under the title and it would have probably still been considered a waste of time to read.

I have no idea how much Jim Collins knows about business / management, but it is clear he’s mastered the art of writing a popular business / management book. The way I see it, the steps involved are:

* State up front what the themes are, but disguise at least a few of them with cryptic labels that portend greater meaning to those who venture further. Who wouldn’t read on when enticed by the promise of the lowly hedgehog’s secret for success or how Admiral Stockdale’s paradoxical key to survival as a P.O.W. can be applied for corporate gain?

* Supply lots of lists, charts, and visuals. Venn diagrams are especially good, it seems. The confluence of 3 good traits at the virtuous center constitutes a synergized sweet spot for those clever enough to recognize it.

* Make common sense bromides sound less trite. You can’t just say, “Hire good people.” It’s better to say you have to get the right people on the bus, and further, that the right people have to be in the right seats. The bus connotes movement, you see; progress towards a common goal. Choosing the perfect metaphor is part of what separates the business-writing cream from the chaff.

* Common sense is good, but for variety, a few counterintuitive insights should be included, too. These can give the savvy reader an extra edge. Even the cagiest adversaries (among those outside the circle of 3 million purchasers privy to the book’s ironic findings) would not figure out such things as the importance of humility among top-tier leaders or that “stop doing” lists are more important than “to do” lists.

* Bulletize. Summarize. Rinse. Repeat.

As I get off my weisenheiming horse for a minute, there probably are some useful concepts here. This was assigned reading in the office, and it does seem to have improved management focus. Plus, we’ve now established a common language regarding the basic tenets (even if certain phrases are said with a smirk--hedgehogs on buses entering the flywheel will know what I’m talking about). I’m no expert, but it’s probably good for its type.

What I can’t decide is whether the book’s research methodology was effective or not. The basic idea was to construct a sample of consistent outperformers and another sample of peers that at one time looked similar, but ultimately languished. The researchers then asked what traits separated the two samples. I sympathize with how nebulous the differentiating factors would be. There’s an inherent squishiness to them, and judgment could cloud the data. It’s a difficult task. At the same time I think it’s fair to criticize the method for its backward-looking nature. In trying to discern cause and effect, something more along the lines of a lab, where various differences could be tested against a control group before knowing the outcomes, would carry more weight. I’m always a little suspicious of studies like this. If, for instance, the true driver of success was simply a fortuitous set of circumstances (right place, right time, right regulations, right trend) then it may appear, after the fact, that it was the right people in the right seats on the bus. I’m told Malcolm Gladwell’s new book gives luck the prominence it deserves.

کتابی که نمی توان آن را به عنوان سرلوحه پیشرفت قرار داد اما می توان از نکات خوب و آموزنده آن به شرط بومی سازی بهره فراوان برد

The good: interesting research, useful advice, great writing.
The not so good: the findings are not nearly as scientific, timeless, or widely applicable as the book claims.

The idea behind this book is that Collins and his team researched a large number of public companies, came up with a list of 11 that made a jump from "good performance" to "great performance" (i.e., significantly out-performed the market) over a sustained period of time, compared those 11 companies with 17 similar companies that never made the jump to "great" (or made the jump but couldn't sustain it), and based on this comparison, came up with a list of 7 "timeless principles" that it takes to go from good to great. Those 7 principles are:

1. Level 5 Leadership: Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what's best for the company. This concept reminded of the type of leader described in the book, "The Captain Class." That is, good leadership is not about charisma, but about "carrying the water."

2. First Who, Then What: Get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to go. Find the right people and try them out in different seats on the bus (different positions in the company). One interesting tidbit I found was that bigger compensation does NOT incentivize better performance (similar to what is argued in the book "Drive"). Instead, compensation is there to get the right people on the bus—that is, the key point of compensation is to hire and retain talent.

3. Confront the Brutal Facts: The Stockdale paradox—Confront the brutal truth of the situation, yet at the same time, never give up hope. I especially liked the idea of turn information into "information you can’t ignore." For example, don't just do surveys of how customers feel about the product; instead, let a customer decide how much to pay for your product (or not pay at all!) based on how happy they are. That is information you won't be able to ignore!

4. Hedgehog Concept: Three overlapping circles: What lights your fire ("passion")? What could you be best in the world at ("best at")—and what can you not be the best in the world at? What makes you money ("driving resource")?

5. Culture of Discipline: Rinsing the cottage cheese. The idea is not to be a strict, harsh ruler, but to offer employees "freedom and responsibility within a framework." That is, you should hire self-disciplined people who don’t need to be managed and instead, focus all your time on managing the system.

6. Technology Accelerators: Using technology to accelerate growth, within the three circles of the hedgehog concept.

7. The Flywheel: The additive effect of many small initiatives; they act on each other like compound interest. Alignment and motivation follows from results—not the other way around. So don't bother spending time on team building exercises or trying to motivate people; instead, manage the system, get results, and that will get the team to bond and be motivated.

While I agree with many of these principles, I don't find the research convincing that (a) it is precisely these characteristics that are necessary to go from good to great or (b) that even if these are the right characteristics, that they apply to the vast majority of companies.

For one thing, the sample size—just 11 companies out of the millions that are out there—is way too small. Maybe it's because I just finished reading "Fooled by Randomness," but 11 wild successes out of a pool of millions strikes me as far more likely to be due to luck (and path dependence!) than strategy. The book tries to reduce the effect of luck by picking a long time timeline (15+ years), but if we had millions of monkeys picking stocks completely at random for a 15 year period, at the end of that period, it would not surprise me if a small number of those monkeys (say, 11) were wildly successful, simply through dumb luck. If this book had identified principles that were present in thousands of companies that were successful and absent in thousands of companies that failed, the argument might have been more convincing, but as it is, I have to more or less dismiss the book's claims that their results are "scientific" (and that's without even getting into the causation vs correlation debate!).

Lending more evidence to this argument of randomness is that the 11 "great" companies are not all paragons of success nowadays:

- Circuit City: filed for bankruptcy in 2008
- Fannie Mae: the book touts their "creative" mortgage practices which, as it turns out, played a major role in the 2008 mortgage crisis
- Gillette: touted as an example of refusing acquisition, but was then acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2005
- Philip Morris: I have no desire to follow practices from cigarette companies
- Wells Fargo: touted as a shining example of great leadership, but lawsuits have revealed a vast array of illegal practices, including massive account fraud in 2016 that implicated the CEO.

So nearly half of the 11 companies this book is based on are questionable, at best. Collins takes this issue heads on, saying that if some of the 11 companies struggle after the book is published, it just means that they are no longer following the 7 timeless principles. But to me, this is just a tautological "No true Scotsman" argument.

Finally, perhaps what bothers me most is that these 7 timeless principles come from research of gigantic public companies. I understand the book focuses on public companies because there's far more data available on public companies than private, but I'm not convinced that the findings from a handful of gigantic, publicly-traded corporations can be applied to 99.9% of business out there, and even less convinced by the book's argument that these learnings apply to other types of organizations too (e.g., churches, sports teams, etc).

Having said all that, I still think the 7 principles _are_ useful. The team that wrote this book is smart, talked with a lot of successful companies, and did find some useful insights. But the key thing to understand is that what they found are *tools*, not underlying principles. These are not laws of physics that have explanatory or predictive power, but merely observations of a few techniques that can be useful when trying to build a great company. If you think of this book as something to add to your toolbelt, you can get something useful out of it. If you think of it as a bible of how to build a great company, you may be disappointed.


As always, I've saved some of my favorite quotes:

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”

“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.”

“You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit. —HARRY S. TRUMAN”

“It is no harder to build something great than to build something good. It might be statistically more rare, it but does not require more suffering than perpetuating mediocrity. It involves less suffering, and perhaps even less work.” <--- I especially like this. Building something great does not require more suffering, but is vastly more satisfying.

buku ini buku yang ditulis berdasarkan riset bertahun-tahun yang serius, dan banyak sekali pemahaman yang sangat bertolak belakang sama pendapat umum yang sering kedengeran di dunia usaha, sbg contoh adalah pengidolaan orang dari luar untuk membuat perubahan yang radikal dalam suatu perusahaan, yang ternyata hanyalah sebuah pengaruh yang sangat kecil di perusahaan yang telah berhasil beranjak dari good to great..
salah satu yang paling menggema bagi gw setelah baca buku ini adalah tentang konsep landak yang merupakan salah satu kunci inti untuk berubah dari good to great..apa itu konsep landak, mending baca bukunya langsung aja, biar seru.

Cảm ơn ba tôi- người đã tặng tôi quyển sách này, ngay khi tôi đang mệt lừ với hàng tá những kế hoạch và dự định trong kinh doanh lần đầu còn dang dở.
Cảm ơn James, quyển sách của ông quả thực quá tuyệt vời; mà không: Có lẽ từ tuyệt vời còn quá khiêm tốn, một quyển sách vĩ đại.
Một lời khuyên dành cho bạn: Hãy mua nó, hãy đọc nó, khi bạn đã thực sự sẵn sàng. Sẵn sàng chính suy nghĩ, tư duy của mình; và quyết tâm thay đổi suy nghĩ về công việc bạn đang thực hiện. Đây không gì hơn một cuốn cẩm nang tiềm tàng, một nhà chiến lược tài ba; nó sẽ chỉ cho bạn cách làm, cách suy nghĩ những thành công, những thất bại nhưng nếu bạn muốn thành công, bạn phải thực sự sẵn sàng để hành động.
Có lẽ nhóm của James đã phải chuẩn bị rất nhiều để có thể có cuốn sách này- chi tiết, đầy đủ, dễ hiểu, dễ nhớ. Nó đã khai thác triệt để vấn đề mà hầu hết mọi người đang gặp phải, đặc biệt là trong kinh doanh: Chỉ thỏa mãn ở mức độ tốt, trung bình; chứ không đòi hỏi phải cố gắng đạt đến mức độ trường tồn-vĩ đại.
Xin trân trọng xếp cuốn sách vào ghệ '' Nếu cho tôi quay ngược thời gian''

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.

was this a riveting read? no not even a little bit. will I ever read this again? absolutely not. was this the worst book I had to read for this class? also no. for that reason alone im giving this 3 stars (generous... if I could do 2.5 I would). obsessed with the phrase level 5 leader. that is my one and only takeaway from this book.

(The English review is placed beneath Russian one)

Раньше я всегда удивлялся, почему книга «От хорошего к великому» никогда не упоминается в списках рекомендованной литературы для маркетологов, составленными самими практикующими маркетологами. До того как я всё же наконец-то прочёл эту книгу, у меня уже был один ответ и он представлял собой книгу под названием «Эффект ореола», которая является неким опровержением идей, что были высказаны в книге «От хорошего к великому» и по сути, опровергает всю книгу целиком. Сейчас же, после того как я прочёл её, я думаю что это просто жвачка имеющая такое же отношение к бизнесу какое self-help литература имеет к психологии.
Трудно что-то написать по поводу этой книги, т.к. придётся заполнять пустоту или даже лучше сказать, объяснять пустоту, ибо книга абсолютна никакая. Автор очень много внимания уделяет таким мутным темам как лидерство и персонал. Лидерство, это любимая тема тех авторов, которые хотят срубить бабла, но которые при этом не имеют ни одной стоящей идеи, да и писать они зачастую тоже не умеют. Да, мы иногда можем наблюдать темы лидерства в книгах по менеджменту, но в удачных таких книгах тема лидерства является лишь одной из многих, она идёт как бы в дополнении. Ну вот возьмём Стива Джобса. Какой он, с точки зрения лидерства? Как пишут люди, что были с ним знакомы: ужасный человек, с которым крайне тяжело было работать. Пожалуй, ни о ком не было высказано столько негативного, сколько о Джобсе его же сотрудниками. Однако компания Apple вошла при нём в историю. Так? Не совсем. До того как был запущен первый iPod, а после - iPhone, Джобс был уволен из Apple. Более того, когда он был в компании, её дела шли не очень-то и хорошо. Компания Microsoft камня на камне не оставила от Apple, а в конце ей и вовсе пришлось купить долю в Apple, чтобы спасти от банкротства. Microsoft полностью доминировала в компьютерной отрасли. И лишь те потребители, что хотели выделиться, показать, что они «не такие как все» (и тут вспоминает знаменитую рекламу Apple с «большим братом) покупали продукцию Apple. Чаще всего это были работники творческих профессий или кто хотел ими стать (или казаться). Только успехи в инновационной области сделали из Apple заметного игрока. Но опять же, это пока есть успехи в сфере инноваций. То же самое можно сказать и о таких людях как Брэнсон и Билл Гейтс. Да, некоторая заслуга присутствует, но Гейтс уже давно не ведёт Microsoft, а «Virgin» Брэнсона известна скорее экстравагантным поведением его главы, нежели какими-то прорывными технологиями. Я это всё веду к тому, что успех складывается из множества факторов микро и макро среды, нежели двумя факторами одним из которых является лидерство.
Вторая тема, такая же спорная, как и первая. Авторы предлагают нам нанять правильных людей на правильные места, а остальных оставить за дверьми нашего автобуса. Вы когда-нибудь слышали, чтобы кто-то в фирме говорил, что «наша цель – нанимать не подходящих людей на не подходящие для них должности»? Конечно, нет! Все хотят получить максимальную выгоду из соотношения затраты/выгода. Разумеется, все ищут самых достойных кандидатов. Может, авторам эта мысль никогда и не приходила в голову?
В общем, беда этой книги в том, она не имеет прямого отношения к бизнесу. Эта книга о бизнесе для тех, кто не планирует там работать. Это как бы fiction. Чтиво из разряда «5 способов выйти замуж за миллионера». Книга, которая не даст знаний, что помогут вам в офисе.
Ну и последнее и самое забавное, это конечно Fannie Mae. Всех тех, кто ставил этой книге высокие оценки, мне хочется спросить: а ничего что их «научный взгляд» привёл к Fannie Mae? Ничего, что крах Fannie Mae перечёркивает всю книгу, т.к. авторы клялись и божились, что они нашли именно те факторы, что делают компанию великой?

I used to wonder why the book "Good to Great" is never mentioned in the lists of recommended literature for marketers, compiled by marketing practitioners themselves. Before I finally read this book, I already had one answer and it was a book called "The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers", which is a kind of refutation of the ideas that were expressed in the book "Good to Great" and, in fact, refutes the entire book. Now that I've read it, I think the book is a gum that is just as relevant to business as self-help literature is to psychology.
It's hard to write something about this book, because you have to fill in the void or even better to say, to explain the void, because the book is absolutely empty. The author pays a lot of attention to such vague topics as leadership and staff. Leadership is the favorite subject of those authors who want to make money, but who do not have any worthwhile ideas, and they are often no good at writing. Yes, we can sometimes see leadership themes in management books, but in successful management books, leadership is just one of the many themes, as if in addition. Well, let's take Steve Jobs. What is he like in terms of leadership? How do the people who knew him describe him? A horrible person with whom it was extremely difficult to work. But he made Apple famous all over the world. Is that right? Not quite. Before the first iPod and iPhone were launched, Jobs was fired from Apple. What's more, when he was in the company, things weren't going so well. Microsoft left no stone unturned by Apple, and in the end Microsoft had to buy a stake in Apple to save the company from bankruptcy. Microsoft dominated the computer industry completely. And only those consumers who wanted to stand out, to show that they were "different" (we can remember the famous Apple ad with a "big brother") were buying Apple products. Most often, they were creative professionals or those who wanted to become (or appear to be) artists. Only success in the innovation field made Apple a prominent player. But again, it is still a success in the field of innovation. The same can be said about people like Richard Branson and Bill Gates. Yes, some merit is present, but Bill Gates hasn't been leading Microsoft for a long time, and Branson's "Virgin" is known more for the extravagant behavior of his head than for some breakthrough technologies. All this leads me to the fact that success is made up of many factors of micro and macro environment, rather than two factors, one of which is leadership.
The second topic is as controversial as the first one. The author writes that we have to hire the right people for the right places, and leave the rest behind the doors of our bus. Have you ever heard anyone in the firm say that "our goal is to hire the wrong people for the wrong positions"? Of course not! Everyone wants to get the most out of the cost-benefit ratio. Of course, everyone is looking for the most worthy candidates. Maybe this idea never occurred to the author?
In general, the trouble with this book is that it is not directly related to business. This book is about business for those who do not plan to work there. It's like fiction. It is a read from the category of "5 ways to marry a millionaire". This book will not give knowledge that will help the reader in the office.
And the last and most funny thing is of course Fannie Mae. I would like to ask all those who gave this book high mark: do you care that the author's "scientific view" led him to Fannie Mae? Doesn't it bother you that the collapse of Fannie Mae crosses through the whole book, because the author almost swore that he had found the very factors that make the company great?

This book was collecting dust on my shelf for at least a year before I finally got around to it. I thought it would be a hopelessly overwhelming book to read. I could not have been more wrong. This is a very clear, concise and easily understood book. The author and his team spent years understanding why some companies beat the market and others did not. This was done after first having carefully made a selection and the conducted indepth interviews. Then they drew the conclusions into lucid and enlightening chapters. Definitely recommended!