These are
books and audio recordings I have found inspirational and helpful in the past
several years. There are Amazon.com links for those items available
through Amazon.com. Please let me know of your favorites and new
discoveries that are not listed.
Good to
Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
by Jim Collins
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
Five years ago, Jim
Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if
so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that
it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of
researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies,
looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over
time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and
Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the
conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to
great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative
change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those
rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and
promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered
with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book
offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do
well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that
managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C.
Edwards
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:
1. Good is the enemy of great. "The good-to-great companies did not focus
principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what not to
do and what to stop doing.”
2. Level 5 leadership. A paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional
will.
3. First who... then what. First get the right people on the bus, the wrong
people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and THEN figure
out where to drive it.
4. Confront the brutal facts (yet never lose faith). The Stockdale paradox:
unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the
difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most
brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
5. The Hedgehog Concept (simplicity within the three circles). See the attached
diagram illustrating the three circles - the intersection of what we can be best
in the world at, what we're passionate about, and what is an economic driver for
us.
6. A Culture of 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.
7. Technology Accelerators. Pioneers in the application of carefully selected
technologies... that relate to our hedgehog concept.
8. The flywheel and the doom loop - the process resembles relentlessly pushing a
giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a
point of breakthrough, and beyond.
“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.”
Janet McCallen
Jim Collins spoke at FPA's 2002 Success Forum, and
afterwards spent an hour with the Board and key staff, talking over how his
concepts apply to associations. Every board and staff leader got a copy of
Good to Great, and we used its language to talk about what was going on at
FPA. Collins is also working with the ASAE Foundation to develop similar
data on associations.
