Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't Features

Additional Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't Information

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:

“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?

What Customers Say About Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't:

Very easy read. Should be read in conjunction with his follow up book that explains the demise of some of the touted successful companies in the book. In context all of his principles seem relevant to much more than just business.

I actually had to return the book, and Mary made it extremely easy. Quick and attentive service - what more could you ask for. Two thumbs up - i'd definitely buy from her again.

In this age of motivational speakers, leadership Gurus, and other hoopla artists, it is refreshing to read a study based on serious research that uncovers new insights into what can transform a good company into a great one. Anyone in upper management should read this book as it documents a significant contribution to management science.

Good to Great is solid and is based on researching why companies make the step from the norm to the exceptional. There are terrific examples of companies pinpointing both "how" and "what" the leadership did to take the businesses to the next level. Want to learn something about running a business. Read Good to Great.

My boss at work forced us to read it and talk about it.I'd never have done this on my own, and for good reason. Today, less than two decades later, two of those companies are out of business, one has been liquidated, another had been bought by a bigger corporation, and all but one of the 11 had serious stock value declines by 2006, before the market meltdown of autumn 2008.So, if Collins' 11 exemplars all went backwards less than 15 years after this famous book -- and its recipe for success -- were written, how can it still be relevant as a model of business success in 2010. I don't like this kind of book, allegedly based on exhaustive research, that sets down a pattern of behaviors that allegedly made some companies rich -- that suggests your company will be prosperous and outperform the competition if you follow the precepts set down herein. He did this by saying it was the result of a laundry list of characteristics from having humble CEOs recruited from inside the company to not particularly paying attention to technology to hiring the right people to get the job done.While all these attributes may contribute to succeess, the falure of this book was presaged in its first chapter, on pages 14-15 of the hardcopy version, where it asks and answers the mock question: "Will your findings continue in the new economy. The precepts of success in business are the same today as they were in the earlier days of the free market. First, this book was written and researched during the roaring 1990s when profits piled up faster than leaves in the autumn where I live. And all Collins' exemplars in this book bit the dust -- most doing so long before 2008.Collins proof is in the pudding exemplars are 11 corporations whose stock values shot up at twice the rate of their competitiors during his period of research in the bamboozled economy of the 1990s that burned white hot.

Just read some of the other 750 or so reviews here. So why did I read it. Because many of its formulae are time-tested and used by people everywhere.Fortunately, you don't have to read this book to understand what these are. Jim Collins, who wrote another book thousands have read, led the research team that set out to find out why the highest performing companies outperformed their competition. The truth is, there's nothing new about the new economy." Anyone that had money in the stock market in September 2008, especially those that held stock in General Motors, knows the "new" economy is much different than the one anyone's seen going back to 1930. Your time will be best spent reading this book to understand for yourself that no one has a formula for success that is longlasting that can be summed up in a book. Most of those values and practices aren't cited herein, although some are.