James C. Collins
I can just let my curiosity wander unleashed.
Companies that change best over time know first and foremost what should not change.
Not every financial company toppled during the 2008 crisis, and some seized the opportunity to take advantage of weaker competitors in the midst of the tumult.
I am completely Socratic.
If I'm going really, really fast, I can do a page of finished text a day, on average.
Just because a company falls doesn't invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.
Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.Collection: Inspirational
Resilency, not perfection, is the signature of greatness.Collection: Greatness
The difference between a good leader and a great leader is humility.Collection: Humility
If you have more than three priorities then you don't have any.Collection: Priorities
Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.Collection: Business
Don't take care of your career. Take care of your people. They will take care of your career.Collection: Careers
People are not your most important asset....the right people are.Collection: People
Great vision without great people is irrelevant.Collection: People
The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconstancy. The signature of greatness is a disciplined and consistent focus on the right things.Collection: Greatness
All companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but few companies have 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. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.Collection: Discipline
Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment.Collection: Vision
Managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.Collection: Opportunity
Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.Collection: People
The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving.Collection: People
Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.Collection: Good Life
In the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then you might gain that great tranquility that comes from knowing that you've had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.Collection: Meaningful
The greatest leaders build organizations that, in the end, don't need them.Collection: Organization
Change your practices without abandoning your core values.Collection: Practice
Comparison, a great teacher once told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game that we can't win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others, we lose the freedom to shape our own lives.Collection: Teacher
A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.Collection: Greatness
The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. The best people don't need to be managed. Guided, taught, led-yes. But not tightly managed.Collection: Business
Don't be interesting - be interested.Collection: Interesting
True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to.Collection: People
We are not imprisoned by circumstances, setbacks, mistakes or staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.Collection: Mistake
The critical question is not whether you'll have luck, but what you do with the luck that you get.Collection: Choices
Profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life.Collection: Oxygen
That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem.Collection: Enemy
An organization is not truly great, if it cannot be great without you.Collection: Organization
How can you succeed by helping others succeed? We succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed.Collection: Helping Others
First figure out your partners, then figure out what ideas to pursue. The most important thing isn't the market you target, the product you develop or the financing, but the founding team.Collection: Team
The x factor of a great leader is humility combined with will.Collection: Humility
A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.Collection: Leadership
Dreams make you click, juice you, turn you on, excite the living daylights out of you. You cannot wait to get out of bed to continue pursuing your dream. The kind of dream I'm talking about gives meaning to your life. it is the ultimate motivator.Collection: Motivational
In determing "the right people," the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.Collection: Educational
How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?Collection: Today
Good-to-great companies set their goals and strategies based on understanding; comparison companies set their goals and strategies based on bravado.Collection: Goal
The inner experience of fallure is totally different than failure. Going to fallure means 100% commitment - you leave nothing in reserve, no mental or physical resource untapped, you never give yourself a psychological out. Failure means making a decision to let go, to be less than 100% committed, when confronted by fear, pain and uncertainty.Collection: Letting Go
Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.Collection: Mediocrity
Start a 'Stop Doing' list. I'll leave it as an existential dilemma on whether to put that task on your To Do listCollection: Tasks
The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure; but to build one that is worthy of enduring.Collection: Entrepreneur
You need self-control in an out-of-control world.Collection: Self
"Growth!" is not a Hedgehog Concept. Rather, if you have the right Hedgehog Concept and make decisions relentlessly consistent with it, you will create such momentum that your main problem will not be how to grow, but how not to grow too fast.Collection: Business
If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I'd put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn. And the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.Collection: Running
The main point is first get the right people on the bus (and wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor in people decisions in order to take a company from Good to Great.Collection: Keys