Good to Great

Book Review

Jim Collins
Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap and others don’t
New York: Harper Business Books, 2001
300 pages

Contents:
Introduction
The Flywheel
  Build Up
      Level 5 Leadership
      First Who then What
      Confronting the Brutal Facts
    Breakthrough
        The Hedgehog Concept
        The Culture of Discipline
        The Technology Accelerators
Review

     
Introduction

Jim Collins has written an appealing book as he translated the research findings into simple, understandable management lessons. As the title suggests, Collins and his research team analysed some key indications such as organisational structure, leadership style and technology to answer the question: ‘Why some organisations are able to make a jump from good to great- sustained greatness?

The motivation to do this project came whilst Collins was having a dinner with a group of people who were called leaders shortly after his earlier book was published. Apparently, the managing director of McKinsey SF told him that they love his last book but its useless because all those companies he wrote about were always been great. This comment made the author to ask himself a question, whether a good company could actually become great or not. Then the author began a 5 year long scientific research project to find out. Collins and his research team used various types of research methodology for extensive 5 years to reveal the secrets of the good to great companies.

He begins the book with the startling quote saying “The good is the enemy of the great”.   He and his 20 graduates searched for the companies that have been continuously had financial success three times greater than the average company for over at least 15 years. The reason why they chose 15 years is to exceed the tenure of a particular CEO in the organisations. Once he identified each one of the 11 companies, he found a comparison company which were at same industry and... [continues]

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