Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Jim Collins

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Amazon.com's Best of 2001
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

From Publishers Weekly
In what Collins terms a prequel to the bestseller Built to Last he wrote with Jerry Porras, this worthwhile effort explores the way good organizations can be turned into ones that produce great, sustained results. To find the keys to greatness, Collins's 21-person research team (at his management research firm) read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data in a five-year project. That Collins is able to distill the findings into a cogent, well-argued and instructive guide is a testament to his writing skills. After establishing a definition of a good-to-great transition that involves a 10-year fallow period followed by 15 years of increased profits, Collins's crew combed through every company that has made the Fortune 500 (approximately 1,400) and found 11 that met their criteria, including Walgreens, Kimberly Clark and Circuit City. At the heart of the findings about these companies' stellar successes is what Collins calls the Hedgehog Concept, a product or service that leads a company to outshine all worldwide competitors, that drives a company's economic engine and that a company is passionate about. While the companies that achieved greatness were all in different industries, each engaged in versions of Collins's strategies. While some of the overall findings are counterintuitive (e.g., the most effective leaders are humble and strong-willed rather than outgoing), many of Collins's perspectives on running a business are amazingly simple and commonsense. This is not to suggest, however, that executives at all levels wouldn't benefit from reading this book; after all, only 11 companies managed to figure out how to change their B grade to an A on their own.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
If you believe that a visionary leader with a strong ego is an essential component of sustained business success, then Jim Collins has a few thousand words for you. His carefully researched audiobook explains that the success of companies that outperform the market for 15 years in a row comes from selfless leadership, rigorous focus, and a culture of discipline. Like a lot of pop business books, much of this title can be filtered into a few catchphrases and concepts. But there's another reason this book has burst through as a bestseller, which you can feel in Collins's narration: He is honestly excited about his research and unconventional findings. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

From Booklist
Collins is coauthor of Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (1994), the widely heralded book that was the result of a six-year research project conducted by Collins and Jerry Porras. They identified 18 companies that met their rigorous standard for long-term performance. They looked for companies that had outperformed the stock market by a factor of 15 starting from 1926. Then they went about the task of identifying what these companies had in common. Now Collins turns his attention to companies that have made the transition from "good to great." This time the findings are backed by five years of research and data analysis. Starting with every company that ever appeared in the Fortune 500, Collins identifies 11 companies that had 15-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market when, after a transition point, they then demonstrated cumulative returns of at least three times the market over the next 15 years. Collins then looked for similarities among the companies. What he found would both surprise and fascinate anyone involved in management. David Rouse
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Amazon.com 2001 年度最佳書籍之一,《從好到偉大》是 Jim Collins 在《永續成功》一書之後提出的問題:「一家好公司能否成為一家偉大的公司?如果可以,該如何做到?」Collins 從 1,435 家公司中篩選出 11 家,包括 Fannie Mae、吉列、沃爾格林和富國銀行等,這些公司在一段時間內實現了顯著的業績改善。他們發現這些偉大的公司都有一個嚴謹的企業文化,嚴格挑選和提拔有紀律的人,以紀律的方式思考和行動。書中融入了許多偉大和不那麼偉大的故事和例子,提供了一個合理的卓越之路,任何組織都應該好好考慮。《從好到偉大》和《永續成功》一樣,是那種經理和 CEO 會一遍又一遍閱讀的書籍。

從《出版者周刊》的評論來看,《從好到偉大》是《永續成功》的前傳,探討了如何將好的組織轉變為能夠產生偉大、持久成果的組織。Collins 的 21 人研究團隊閱讀和編碼了 6,000 篇文章,生成了超過 2,000 頁的訪談文字,並在五年的項目中創建了 384 兆字節的電腦數據,以找到偉大的關鍵。Collins 能夠將這些發現濃縮成一本有力、有說服力且有指導意義的指南,這是他寫作能力的證明。在確定了一個好到偉大的轉變定義(包括 10 年的休耕期和 15 年的增加利潤期)之後,Collins 的團隊研究了所有進入《財富》500 強(約 1,400 家)的公司,找到了符合標準的 11 家,包括沃爾格林、金佰利克拉克和電子城。這些公司的成功關鍵在於 Collins 所稱的「刺蝟概念」,即一個產品或服務使公司在全球競爭中脫穎而出,推動公司的經濟引擎,並讓公司充滿熱情。儘管取得偉大成就的公司都在不同的行業,但每一家公司都採取了 Collins 的策略。儘管一些整體發現與直覺相反(例如,最有效的領導者是謙虛和堅強的,而不是外向的),但 Collins 對經營企業的觀點非常簡單和常識。然而,這並不意味著各級主管不會從閱讀這本書中受益;畢竟,只有 11 家公司成功地將他們的 B 級變成了 A 級。

版權 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

從 AudioFile 雜誌的評論來看,如果你認為一位有遠見且自信心強的領導者是持續商業成功的重要組成部分,那麼 Jim Collins 在這本書中提供了幾千個字的建議。