A MUST RAED! Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't is a management book by Jim C. Collins that describes how companies transition from being good companies to great companies, and how most companies fail to make the transition. The book was published on October 16, 2001.

1. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the
Leap and Other’s Don’t
#1 BESTSELLER
by JIM COLLINS
Some takeaways from the book of
Jim Collins
“Good to Great”
by Md Badiuzzaman

2. The Debrief
What makes a company GREAT?
150 millions of companies are started each year.
MOST do not MAKE it, Some MAKE it, some
SURVIVE while some THRIVE!
It is NOT how much the CEO makes, the
TECHNOLOGY or WHO they merge with.
It is DISCIPLINE – In PEOPLE, in THOUGHT and
in ACTION.

3. Transition from Good to Great

4. Audio Book Review
GOOD TO GREAT – Management book by James
C Collins.
Transition from being good companies to great
companies.
GREATNESS: Financial Performance which is
way better than the MKT average over a
sustained period – at least 15 YEARS.
HOW GREAT: Cumulative stock returns that beat
the general stock MKT by an AVG of 7 times in 15
years, better than the twice the results delivered by
the world’s great companies including Coca-Cola,
Intel, GE, and Merck.

5. The 11 Great Companies

6. The G2G Companies

7. Good is the enemy of great
- G2G companies focused on what not to do and what to
stop doing.
- Technology had nothing to do with transformation
from good to great.
- Mergers and acquisitions played virtually no role in a
transformation from good to great.
- Good to great companies had no name or program to
signify their transformations.
- Good to great companies were not in a great
industries.

8. Good to Great
Greatness is not a function or circumstance
Greatness it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious
choice & discipline
Jim Collins

9. Good to Great
Collins “framework of ideas” from steering a company from good
to great involved six key learnings wrapped in continual process he
called the FLYWHEEL.

10. Good to Great

11. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerators
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
Level 5
Leadership
Good to Great

12. Level 5 Leadership
5–Level 5 Executive
4–Effective Leader
3–Competent Manager
2–Contributing Team Member
1–Highly Capable Individual

13. Level 5 Leadership
 Leaders who employ a paradoxical mix of
personal humility and professional will
 Set up successors for even greater
success
 Compelling modesty, self-effacing,
understated
5–Level 5 Executive
4–Effective Leader
3–Competent Manager
2–Contributing Team Member
1–Highly Capable Individual
 Fanatically driven to
produce sustainable
results
 More plow horse than
show horse

14. Level 5 Leadership
5–Level 5 Executive
4–Effective Leader
3–Competent Manager
2–Contributing Team Member
1–Highly Capable Individual
 Look in mirror and
take full responsibility
for poor decisions
 Many people have the
potential to evolve
into Level 5
 Attribute success to
other than themselves

15. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerators
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
First Who…
Then What
Good to Great

16. First Who . . . Then What
 Leaders began the
transformation by
first getting the
right people on the
bus (and the
wrong people off
the bus).
“Who” questions came before “what”
decisions - before vision, strategy,
organization structure, and tactics.

17. First Who . . . Then What
 Three practical disciplines for being
rigorous:
When in doubt, don’t hire
When you know you need to make a
people decision, act
 Put your best people
on your best
opportunities, not
biggest problems
 Leaders were rigorous, not ruthless in
people decisions.

18. First Who . . . Then What
 Management teams debate vigorously
to find best answers, yet unify behind
decisions.
“Right” person has
more to do with
character traits and
innate capabilities
than with knowledge,
background, or skills.

19. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerators
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Good to Great

20. Confront the Brutal Facts
 Must create a culture
wherein people have a
tremendous opportunity
to be heard and,
ultimately, for the truth
to be heard.
 Setting off on the path
to greatness requires
confronting the brutal
facts of current reality.

21. Confront the Brutal Facts
 Lead with questions, not
answers
 Engage in dialogue and
debate, not coercion
 Conduct autopsies,
without blame
 Build red flag
mechanisms where
information cannot be
ignored
 Four basic practices:

22. Confront the Brutal Facts
 Stockdale Paradox:
Retain absolute faith
that you can and will
prevail in the end,
AND at the same time
confront the most
brutal facts of your
current reality,
whatever they might
be.

23. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerators
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
Hedgehog
Concept
Good to Great

24. Hedgehog Concept
 Hedgehogs simplify a
complex world into a
single organizing idea,
a basic principle or
concept that unifies
and guides everything.
 Hedgehogs see what is
essential, and ignore
the rest.

25. Hedgehog Concept
 The Hedgehog Concept is a deep
understanding of three intersecting
circles translated into a simple,
crystalline concept:
 What you are deeply
passionate about
 What you can be best
in the world at
 What drives your
economic engine

26. Hedgehog Concept
What you are deeply
passionate about
What you can
be the best in
the world at
What drives
your
economic
engine
Simplicity
within
the three
circles

27. Hedgehog Concept
 Getting the Hedgehog Concept takes an
average of four years.
 The right people
 Engaged in vigorous
dialogue and debate
 Infused with the
brutal facts
 Guided by questions
formed by the three
circles
 It is an iterative process by The Council:

28. Hedgehog Concept
The
Council
All Guided by
the Three Circles
Ask Questions
Dialogue &
Debate
Autopsies
& Analysis
Executive
Decisions
An Iterative
Process

29. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerators
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
Culture of
Discipline
Good to Great

30. Culture of Discipline
 People who “rinse their
cottage cheese”
 Not about a tyrant who
disciplines
 Getting disciplined people
who engage in disciplined
thought and who then take
disciplined action,
fanatically consistent with
three circles

31. Culture of Discipline
 Requires people who
adhere to a consistent
system.
 Gives people freedom and
responsibility within
framework of that system.
 Involves a duality.

32. Culture of Discipline
 Budgeting is to decide which arenas fit
Hedgehog Concept and should be fully funded
and which should not be funded at all.
 “Stop doing” lists are
more important than “to
do” lists.
 “Anything that does not
fit with our Hedgehog
Concept, we will not do.”
 Includes willingness to shun opportunities
that fall outside the three circles.

33. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerators
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
Technology
Accelerators
Good to Great

34. Technology Accelerators
 Yet they often become pioneers in the
application of carefully selected
technologies.
 Does it fit directly with
your Hedgehog Concept?
 Good-to-greats used
technology as an
accelerator of momentum,
not a creator of it.
 Good-to-greats avoid technology fads and
bandwagons.

35. Technology Accelerators
 Technology by itself is never a root cause of
either greatness or decline.
 “Crawl, walk, run”
can be a very
effective approach,
even during times of
rapid and radical
technological
change.

36. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerations
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
Flywheel
Good to Great

37. The Flywheel
 Good-to-great
transformations never
happened in one fell
swoop.
 There was no single defining action, no
grand program, no one killer innovation, no
solitary lucky break, no miracle moment.
 Instead they followed a predictable pattern
of buildup and breakthrough.
 Like pushing on a giant, heavy flywheel, it
takes a lot of effort to get the thing moving
at all, but . . .

38. The Flywheel
 With persistent pushing . . .
 In a consistent direction . . .
 Over a long period of time . . .
 In good-to-great companies problems of
commitment, alignment, motivation, and
change largely take care of themselves.
 Alignment follows from results and
momentum, not the other way around.
 The flywheel builds momentum . . .
 Eventually hitting a point of breakthrough.

39. Level 5
Leadership
First Who…
Then What
Confront the
Brutal Facts
Hedgehog
Concept
Culture of
Discipline
Technology
Accelerators
Disciplined People Disciplined Thought Disciplined Action
Buildup
Good to Great

40. Elevate the Average
Mediocre people + Great Strategy = Mediocre Results
In reality, our world consists mostly of average
performers, therefore the realistic formula is
Average performers + consistent execution
= Excellent results

41. Learnings
- Celebrity executives almost never lead good companies to
greatness: Level 5 leadership.
- You can not achieve great things without great people: First
who… then what.
- Simplicity rules: the Hedgehog concept.
- Enterprise –wide discipline is essential: Culture of discipline.
- Technology is an accelerator

42. References
- https://www.dropbox.com/s/frm9pyw65vqmwq0/GoodtoGreatW
hySomeCompaniesMaketheLeap...AndOthersDont_ep6_APUB5
A2F849Q0.mp3?dl=0
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_Great
- https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-06-662099-2
- Other online sources

43. HAPPY READING!
Your comments
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