Good to Great

Built To Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. 

But what about companies that are not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? Are there those that convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? If so, what are the distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

Over five years, Jim Collins and his research team have analyzed the histories of 28 companies, discovering why some companies make the leap and others don't. The findings include:

• Level 5 Leadership: A surprising style, required for greatness.
• The Hedgehog Concept: Finding your three circles, to transcend the curse of competence.
• A Culture of Discipline: The alchemy of great results.
• Technology Accelerators: How good-to-great companies think differently about technology.
• The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Why those who do frequent restructuring fail to make the leap.

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: ""What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?""

Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond

""Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.""—Jim Collins

Decline can be avoided. Decline can be detected. Decline can be reversed.

Amid the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?

In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course.

By understanding the stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom. As Collins' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger. As long as you never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

A companion guidebook to the number-one bestselling Good to Great, focused on implementation of the flywheel concept, one of Jim Collins’ most memorable ideas that has been used across industries and the social sectors, and with startups.

The key to business success is not a single innovation or one plan. It is the act of turning the flywheel, slowly gaining momentum and eventually reaching a breakthrough. Building upon the flywheel concept introduced in his groundbreaking classic Good to Great, Jim Collins teaches readers how to create their own flywheel, how to accelerate the flywheel’s momentum, and how to stay on the flywheel in shifting markets and during times of turbulence.

Combining research from his Good to Great labs and case studies from organizations like Amazon, Vanguard, and the Cleveland Clinic which have turned their flywheels with outstanding results, Collins demonstrates that successful organizations can disrupt the world around them—and reach unprecedented success—by employing the flywheel concept.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.