Summary Of Good To Great By Jim Collins

Jim Collins creates a sort of guideline for companies that are mediocre or have had mediocre performances who want to make the leap to becoming a great company. The way Collins came up with these guidelines is by studying 11 great companies that were selected from a list of Forbes 500 companies and deemed great companies using a criteria created by Collins' research team. These 11 companies were than each compared to a company in the same industry with similar resources but who did not perform as well as the "great" companies in the 15 year time span in which the companies were studied. Collins was able to create the flywheel concept out of his studies which is broken down into 6 parts. The one that is the focus of this paper is the level 5
It takes a leader with two characteristics to lead a truly great company to that success and those are: personal humility and professional will. The way a company can truly be great is by utilizing a level 5 leader who exemplifies the qualities that Jim Collins describes in his book, Good to Great. A leader is at his or her best when they are able to challenge the workers in the company and to inspire them by the way they lead. What is different about the level 5 leader that Collins describes is in the paradox of it all. A leader is quiet, laid back, almost to the point of being considered shy yet at the same time there is this incredible drive to be the best not for the sake of oneself but because that is what is best for the company. The leader is put in that position of the company to shake things up and change the company
As a prime example there was Steve Jobs, he was a co founder of Apple, then left and co founded Pixar, all before returning back to Apple to make it one of best companies in the world today. He was charismatic, he was egotistical, he was given credit for the success of Apple and he graciously took it, he was a celebrity. When people think of Apple they think of Steve Jobs, he created Apple and brought it to its greatness. He was not a level 5 leader. He was extremely driven but he was not the quiet type. He would not be the type of leader to just blend in with the crowd, instead hundreds of thousands would watch him during a new product release and hang on his every word. The fact that he was successful as the CEO of multiple big name companies while taking a large amount of the credit, that was well deserved, is one of the best counterexample to Collins level 5 leader. Steve Jobs was extremely devoted to the companies he worked for and he worked tirelessly to make sure they were the best that he could make them but he did all of this by going with his own style that contradicted the teachings of