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A review by finfortess
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't by Jim Collins
4.0
This is a great study of how companies can go from surviving in the market to kicking the market's ass. Very well thought out, well researched.
Good to Great is a brilliant book about how decent companies change and become amazing companies. Now it’s a bit dated, the research conducted was ended in 2000, so many of the companies have fallen from their pedestals since the book was written, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a great book, it simply means that these companies drifted from the things that made them great in the first place.
The book takes a look at companies that were priced at or below their market for 15 years, and then shot up to be three times better than the market for a sustained 15 years. This does discount companies that achieved greatness before they were 15 years old, but as he talks about at the end, it is very likely that these companies followed the same concepts set up in the book.
The main attributes of these Good To Great companies is that they had strong Level 5 Leadership, a hedgehog concept of sticking to what your passionate about and great at, and being willing to confront the brutal facts about your market and the economy. These aren’t the only attributes or elements to becoming a great company, but these are some of the more basic and needed ones.
My only reservation, was that this is how companies who were bad became good, that doesn't necessarily mean that it takes the same steps to have a company that starts out strong and never backs down. I realize this isn't the point of this book, but it seemed like he was arguing that these things work for every company out there, not just the ones that were failing. We are also only talking about companies that beat their markets three times over. There are plenty of successful companies that are above the market average just not that high.
The book is well written, easy to read, and very informative. It is not the be-all end-all of how to make a company great, but it has a lot of very good information to consider if the company you run or work for seems to be having some trouble.
Overall I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars.
Good to Great is a brilliant book about how decent companies change and become amazing companies. Now it’s a bit dated, the research conducted was ended in 2000, so many of the companies have fallen from their pedestals since the book was written, but that doesn’t mean that it is not a great book, it simply means that these companies drifted from the things that made them great in the first place.
The book takes a look at companies that were priced at or below their market for 15 years, and then shot up to be three times better than the market for a sustained 15 years. This does discount companies that achieved greatness before they were 15 years old, but as he talks about at the end, it is very likely that these companies followed the same concepts set up in the book.
The main attributes of these Good To Great companies is that they had strong Level 5 Leadership, a hedgehog concept of sticking to what your passionate about and great at, and being willing to confront the brutal facts about your market and the economy. These aren’t the only attributes or elements to becoming a great company, but these are some of the more basic and needed ones.
My only reservation, was that this is how companies who were bad became good, that doesn't necessarily mean that it takes the same steps to have a company that starts out strong and never backs down. I realize this isn't the point of this book, but it seemed like he was arguing that these things work for every company out there, not just the ones that were failing. We are also only talking about companies that beat their markets three times over. There are plenty of successful companies that are above the market average just not that high.
The book is well written, easy to read, and very informative. It is not the be-all end-all of how to make a company great, but it has a lot of very good information to consider if the company you run or work for seems to be having some trouble.
Overall I give this book a 4 out of 5 stars.