Good To Great

Summary

In Good to Great Jim Collins looks at what makes good companies great. For this Jim Collins and his team analyzed a lot of different great companies and looked at what they had in common. They then identified key ideas that all the great companies share.

So, what makes companies great, in the long run?

1. Level 5 Leadership: => Personal humility + intense professional will... this type of leadership is also about the long term, level 5 leaders are people who think about growth in the long term and prioritize it over short term gains. As such this idea is related to an idea from The Unicorn Project
2. Answering First Who, Then What => Getting the right people on the bus, assembling a kickass team, then deciding what that team should be working on. The importance of the team is much higher than anything else, if you have highly capable and motivated people, they could make anything work. Hiring is #1 prio for any company because of this
3. Confronting the Brutal Facts => If you're default dead, you have to do something about it, there is no point in hiding away from reality, an open and psychologically safe environment is necessary in order to enable this, if you don't have it, people will hide uncomfortable truths and mistakes
4. Adhering to the Hedgehog Concept => Venn Diagram between: what you can be best in the world at + what you are passionate about + what is making more money than it costs (i.e. creates value), this leads to one core focus, one idea, something to focus on, simple strategy is good strategy because it can be easily explained and followed
5. A Culture of Discipline => Discipline needs to be a core value of the company, people need to be disciplined by nature in order to do great work together,
6. Using Technology as an Accelerator => Instead of chasing technology trends all the time, it's important to focus on what is important an can be used to improve the core value proposition => i.e. the hedgehog of the company, sometimes technology is not necessary, sometimes it's key, great companies know when to adapt technology to improve their core offering
7. Identifying and Using their Flywheel => Every great company has to have at least one flywheel, that they can crank, some process, which the more work they put into it, the bigger and better the results get, something that keeps and amplifies the momentum of the company, the more you use it

In summary, Good to Great provides a framework, that, if consistently applied can lead companies to greatness. And it gives names to the building blocks of the framework, mental handles that people can use to talk and reason about them.

TLDR: Good companies need level 5 leaders, the right people on the bus, the brutal facts, the hedgehog concept, a culture of discipline, technology as an accelarator, and flywheel effects.