Jim Collins' book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't

The Obstacle: Built to Last, the seminal management study of the 1990s, demonstrated how strong businesses endure over time and how long-term sustained performance can be built into an organization's DNA from day one; But what about the business that didn't have stellar DNA from the start? How can good, middling, or even bad businesses acquire long-lasting greatness? The research: This question plagued Jim Collins' thoughts for a long time. Exist any businesses that defy gravity and transform long-term inferiority into long-term superiority?

If so, what are the unifying traits that enable a business to transform from good to great? The Criteria: Collins and his research team selected a group of outstanding businesses using strict criteria that made the transition to great performance and maintained those results for at least fifteen years. Really great? After the transformation, the good-to-great businesses produced cumulative stock returns that outperformed the general stock market on average by seven times over the course of fifteen years, outperforming by more than twice the performance of a composite index of the world's most successful businesses, which included Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons: The research team compared the good-to-great businesses with a group of carefully chosen counterparts that were unable to make the transition from good to fantastic. What had changed? Why did one group of businesses achieve truly excellent performance while the other group maintained only good performance? All twenty-eight of the participating companies' histories were examined by the team over a five-year period. Collins and his team identified the essential factors that determine greatness after going through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews. These factors explain why some businesses succeed while others fail;

The Results: Many readers will be surprised by the findings of the Good to Great study, which shed light on practically every aspect of management strategy and practise. The results show that; The research team was astounded to learn the kind of leadership needed to attain greatness; Level 5 Leaders; (Simplicity within the Three Circles) The Hedgehog Concept Overcoming the curse of competence is necessary to progress from good to outstanding; A culture of discipline: When an entrepreneurial ethic and a culture of discipline are combined, amazing outcomes are the consequence.

Technology promoters: Different perspectives on the role of technology are held by good to outstanding businesses; The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those that embark on dramatic transformation initiatives and traumatic restructurings will probably fall short; Jim Collins says that some of the study's core principles include "fly in the face of our contemporary business culture and, to be truthful, will enrage some people. Maybe, but who can afford to dismiss these results?

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