A review by jaredpence
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Other's Don't by Jim Collins

3.0

It's still largely a "business book," which is my way of saying that it is making illogical assumptions when it transfers descriptions of businesses into generalized precepts that it recommends. Like any other self-help book, it looks for answers in individuals, individualism, and identity politics rather than acknowledging the unscientific nature of business and the systemic and contextual forces that create business success and failure. That said, I enjoyed the descriptions of what Collins categorizes as "great" companies (they had to be companies that beat general stock market growth for more than 15 years in a row) and thought the comparison company set-up was a smart way to show that it wasn't just a particular field or industry that was the primary instigator of success. I liked some of the precepts too, like confronting the brutal facts and that technology was never the reason for a company's success. I'm intrigued by the idea of "getting the right people on the bus," but it seems like a strategy that can only happen either by luck or already being a large, wealthy, successful enough company in the first place. What companies have the luxury of hiring the best people before they know what those people's jobs will be or what the company is even trying to accomplish?