"It's just so easy to settle for a good life. That's why few people attain great lives." - Jim Collins

This Good To Great project is a way to note down what I learned from Jim Collins's excellent book named Good To Great. This project will help to steer me in the right direction and remind me about the path that I'm following.

Let's start with this post as the introduction of the book.

Overview

In this book, the authors will:

• Identify good-to-great companies that satisfy a condition: 15 years cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market, punctuated by a transition point, then cumulative returns at least 3 times the market over the next 15 years.
• Compare these companies to a selected group of comparison companies that failed to make the leap, or failed to sustain the leap, to discover what the main differences are.

When selecting a set of comparison companies, the crucial question in the study is not "What did the good-to-great companies share in common?". Rather, the crucial question is "What did the good-to-great companies share in common that distinguished them from the comparison companies?". In other words, the key question is "What systematically distinguishes the good-to-great companies from the comparison companies?".

Examples of astonished clues

• Both sets of companies had well-defined strategies.
• The good-to-great companies were not in great industries. Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness is largely a matter of conscious choice.
• The good-to-great companies did not focus on what to do to become great, they focused equally on what not to do and what to stop doing.
• Celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great.
• The good-to-great companies paid scant attention to managing change, motivating people, or creating alignment.
• There's no systematic pattern linking any specific forms of executive compensation to the process of going from good to great.
• Technology is just the accelerator, it cannot cause the transformation.
• Acquisitions play no role in igniting transformation.
• The transformation is unaware.

Framework of concepts

This is a preview of what's to come in the rest of the book. The authors divided the transformation into 3 stages of buildup followed by breakthroughs including disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each stage, there're 2 key concepts. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept the authors called the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great.

Disciplined people

• Level 5 Leadership: The good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. They are described as self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and shy.
• First Who ... Then What: The good-to-great leaders didn't begin by setting a new vision and strategy. They first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, then they figured out where to drive to.

Disciplined thought

• Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet never lose faith): You must maintain unwavering faith regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.
• The Hedgehog Concept: To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.

Disciplined action

• A culture of discipline: Combining culture and discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don't need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don't need excessive controls.
• Technology Accelerators: The good-to-great companies carefully selected technologies.

Takeaways

This good-to-great problem is a human problem, not just a business one.

A good company might become a great company.

A good version of you might become a great one.