Book Review

Good to Great: 

A Fresh Look at Management Practices

By Jim Collins

Good to Great is a fresh look at management strategy and practice; and many of the findings shake up our accepted techniques. An iconoclastic work, it offers several  key concepts that fly in the face of modern business culture and have upset previously unquestioned management assumptions.

 Jim Collins, coauthor of Good to Great and a former professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, thinks that business leaders need to rethink management styles to meet challenges of the new millennium.

 For example, the authors write: “Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger good of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious – but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.”  

Good to Great offers five new business strategies:

 Level 5 Leaders: This work discovered that the type of leadership required to achieve greatness is not necessarily the hard-charging CEO who takes no prisoners. Collins writes that he thought an executive’s role was overrated in a company’s success. However, Good to Great  revealed the exact opposite. In fact, history has shown that most successful executives are cut from the same cloth, exhibiting two most important attributes - humility and a strong will.  

 The Hedgehog Concept: To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.

 A Culture of Discipline: The combination of a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you have the magical ingredients of great results.

 Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. While it’s a great tool, technology alone can’t take a company to the highest levels. The right people are a company’s most prized assets.

 The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Radical change and massive restructuring will typically lead to more confusion.

 The best selling book is a good read filled with challenging ideas that can help readers take their companies from good to great.

By Frank Szivos

back to: top  reviews  home

Buy this book from: