Good to Great by Jim Collins
Why some companies make the leap…and other’s don’t
“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… Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good – and that is their main problem.”
“Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years… [They] contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap… Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness…
The findings will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice.”