Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by James C. Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
An older book, published in 2001, but still very relevant to today’s businesses and, more interestingly, to any project or endeavor you are interested in moving out of the good category into the great one. The research study was impressive. Be sure to check out the details included in the appendices.
Two principles of good to great stuck out to me:
1. “First Who … Then What.”
You need to have the right kind of people in the right place before you decide the direction you want to go. Further, find people who through personality and career choice are invested in change and improvement within their field. I’ve learned to grow wary of people who benefit from a system or process. If that system breaks or needs modernized, those same people become the enemy of progress.
2. “Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great”
Everyone has technology. Implementing technology to replace a manual process or because it’s new is the baseline of good business practices. To use technology to become great, you need to develop new technologies alongside and integrated into new workflows, policies, and processes. Why technology is selected and implemented is far more important than what or how.
