Jim Collins would want to introduce the book as '7 habits of Highly Effective Companies' when 'Effective' means companies that went from usual survival mode to phenomenally outperforming the market consistently. Now, the 7-habits has some real gems, and otherwise a lot of generic gyan, the same is true with this book too.
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Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Good to Great ~ Jim Collins
Summary
Jim Collins would want to introduce the book as '7 habits of Highly Effective Companies' when 'Effective' means companies that went from usual survival mode to phenomenally outperforming the market consistently. Now, the 7-habits has some real gems, and otherwise a lot of generic gyan, the same is true with this book too.
From thousands of publically traded companies market-price data Jim Collins (and the research team) came up with 11 companies that showed a Good to Great transition. They had a specific criteria to identify such transition and 'Great' company. Then they studied these 11 companies and their direct comparison companies to come up with common traits. Traits are
1) Level 5 Leader- leaders who have both “personal humility” and “professional will”. Seems arbit idea but they thing to be common quality of CEOs of those 11 companies. Perhaps it works that way, a low-profile, open-to-feedback CEO may get opportunity of invite the brightest ideas and also can get buy-in from all without hurting their egos. But I don't think Jamie Dimon of JPMC, or Sandy Weill of Citi or Jack Welsh .. any other guys fit this critieria and still they made their companies great.
2) Get the right people in team. Don't worry about what to do, that's for later. First who, then what.
3) The “Hedgehog concept”: One simple idea about what you can best in the world at, make money from and like doing it. Each of them separately and together are different from what is your core-competence.
4) Culture of self-discipline- so that you just make systems and norms and team follows it. You dont have to spend time on managing/ motivation etc. This comes from step 2.
5) Pioneering use of technology as accelerator, but as a source of transition
6) Flywheel- all these things together, very slowly build-up momentum and like fly-wheel sustain it. Then the company breaks through.
My view of the book
A lot of gas. Perhaps the points he is making are correct, but after reading the book who are no wiser as to how to make it happen- how can be a level-5 guy, how you identify who are right people, how you actually come to Hedgehog concept etc.
Biggest point can be that perhaps his criteria to decide on these G2G companies was not the correct one and so these 6 common traits of publicly traded old (atleast 50 years old to have that much history) are not relevant for the remaining companies and organizations.
But overall still there were quite some good pointers. Biggest of them was that while doing budgeting G2G companies don't reduce allocation for their non-main-focus areas, they simply stop allocation for them- they have a stop-doing list (as opposed to to-do list).
Read this article on vary good analysis of the book.
Jim Collins would want to introduce the book as '7 habits of Highly Effective Companies' when 'Effective' means companies that went from usual survival mode to phenomenally outperforming the market consistently. Now, the 7-habits has some real gems, and otherwise a lot of generic gyan, the same is true with this book too.
From thousands of publically traded companies market-price data Jim Collins (and the research team) came up with 11 companies that showed a Good to Great transition. They had a specific criteria to identify such transition and 'Great' company. Then they studied these 11 companies and their direct comparison companies to come up with common traits. Traits are
1) Level 5 Leader- leaders who have both “personal humility” and “professional will”. Seems arbit idea but they thing to be common quality of CEOs of those 11 companies. Perhaps it works that way, a low-profile, open-to-feedback CEO may get opportunity of invite the brightest ideas and also can get buy-in from all without hurting their egos. But I don't think Jamie Dimon of JPMC, or Sandy Weill of Citi or Jack Welsh .. any other guys fit this critieria and still they made their companies great.
2) Get the right people in team. Don't worry about what to do, that's for later. First who, then what.
3) The “Hedgehog concept”: One simple idea about what you can best in the world at, make money from and like doing it. Each of them separately and together are different from what is your core-competence.
4) Culture of self-discipline- so that you just make systems and norms and team follows it. You dont have to spend time on managing/ motivation etc. This comes from step 2.
5) Pioneering use of technology as accelerator, but as a source of transition
6) Flywheel- all these things together, very slowly build-up momentum and like fly-wheel sustain it. Then the company breaks through.
My view of the book
A lot of gas. Perhaps the points he is making are correct, but after reading the book who are no wiser as to how to make it happen- how can be a level-5 guy, how you identify who are right people, how you actually come to Hedgehog concept etc.
Biggest point can be that perhaps his criteria to decide on these G2G companies was not the correct one and so these 6 common traits of publicly traded old (atleast 50 years old to have that much history) are not relevant for the remaining companies and organizations.
But overall still there were quite some good pointers. Biggest of them was that while doing budgeting G2G companies don't reduce allocation for their non-main-focus areas, they simply stop allocation for them- they have a stop-doing list (as opposed to to-do list).
Read this article on vary good analysis of the book.
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