Collins Leader Quotes

I know my own reasons for keeping Peeta alive. He's my friend, and this is my way to defy the Capitol, to subvert its terrible Games. But if I had no real ties to him, what would make me want to save him, to choose him over myself? Certainly he is brave, but we have all been brave enough to survive a Games. There is that quality of goodness that's hard to overlook, but stil... and then I think of it, what Peeta can do so much better than the rest of us. He can use words. He obliterated the rest of the field at both interviews. And maybe it's because of that underlying goodness that he can move a crowd--no, a country--to his side with the turn of a simple sentence. I remember thinking that was the gift the leader of our revolution should have. Has Haymitch convinced the others of this? That Peeta's tongue would have far greater power against the Capitol than any physical strength the rest of us could claim? I don't know. It still seems like a really long leap for some of the tributes. I mean, we're talking about Johanna Mason here. But what other explanation can there be for their decided efforts to keep him alive?

The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.

Katniss isn't the kind of hero we're used to seeing in fiction. She reacts more than she acts, she doesn't want to be a leader, and by the end of Mockingjay, she hasn't come into her own or risen like a phoenix from the ashes for some triumphant moment that gives us a sense of satisfaction with how far our protagonist has come. She's not a Buffy. She's not a Bella. She limps across the finish line when we're used to seeing heroes racing; she eases into a quiet, steady love instead of falling fast and hard.

History repeats itself. As do the methods used by those specializing in the elimination of leaders who unite people into a strong force for dignity, justice and self-determination.

I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of, let's say 100,000 miles, their outlook would be fundamentally changed. The all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument suddenly silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.

The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts. Indeed,

First Who ... Then What. We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.

It is not to political leaders our people must look, but to themselves. Leaders are but individuals, and individuals are imperfect, liable to error and weakness. The strength of the nation will be the strength of the spirit of the whole people.

The outsider sees details as meaningless, or doesn’t see the details at all. That is what makes most of us outsiders.

Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States

leader is only as strong as the force that stands behind him.

[Ella Baker]'s second defining characteristic was her dislike of top-down leadership... 'She felt leaders were not appointed but the rose up. Someone will rise. Someone will emerge'. It was an attitude Baker shared with some of the older women in the movement.

Every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years. • “Level 5” refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with Level 5 at the top. Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves. • Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure. • Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company. • Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions. • Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence—more plow horse than show horse. • Level 5 leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. The comparison CEOs often did just the opposite—they looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results.

Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.

the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts. Indeed,

The envisioned future should be so exciting in its own right that it would continue to keep the organization motivated even if the leaders who set the goal disappeared.

become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution. The person

The lesson, says Collins, is clear. We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

When good results happen, Level 5 Leaders credit good luck. When results are disappointing, Level 5 Leaders blame only themselves and take responsibility.

Napoléon Bonaparte. The new leader had no immediate fight to pick with America; some thought he might actually bring peace to Europe. Hamilton’s endless demands for more funding and troops were beginning to look foolish.

Level 5 leaders, Collins argues, ‘channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. Their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.’ Pass the ball.

The idea that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action”—and that we should embrace an overall ethos of “Fast! Fast! Fast!”—is a good way to get killed. 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to.

As the leader of the international Human Genome Project, which had labored mightily over more than a decade to reveal this DNA sequence, I stood beside President Bill Clinton in the East Room of the White House... Clinton's speech began by comparing this human sequence map to the map that Meriwether Lewis had unfolded in front of President Thomas Jefferson in that very room nearly two hundred years earlier. Clinton said, "Without a doubt, this is the most important, most wondrous map ever produced by humankind." But the part of his speech that most attracted public attention jumped from the scientific perspective to the spiritual. "Today," he said, "we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift." Was I, a rigorously trained scientist, taken aback at such a blatantly religious reference by the leader of the free world at a moment such as this? Was I tempted to scowl or look at the floor in embarrassment? No, not at all. In fact I had worked closely with the president's speechwriter in the frantic days just prior to this announcement, and had strongly endorsed the inclusion of this paragraph. When it came time for me to add a few words of my own, I echoed this sentiment: "It's a happy day for the world. It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God." What was going on here? Why would a president and a scientist, charged with announcing a milestone in biology and medicine, feel compelled to invoke a connection with God? Aren't the scientific and spiritual worldviews antithetical, or shouldn't they at least avoid appearing in the East Room together? What were the reasons for invoking God in these two speeches? Was this poetry? Hypocrisy? A cynical attempt to curry favor from believers, or to disarm those who might criticize this study of the human genome as reducing humankind to machinery? No. Not for me. Quite the contrary, for me the experience of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific achievement and an occasion of worship.

Then there’s Finnick Odair, the sex symbol from the fishing district, who kept Peeta alive in the arena when I couldn’t. They want to transform Finnick into a rebel leader as well, but first they’ll have to get him to stay awake for more than five minutes.

quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated. The lesson, says Collins, is clear. We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

The Human Genome Project, the full sequence of the normal human genome, was completed in 2003. In its wake comes a far less publicized but vastly more complex project: fully sequencing the genomes of several human cancer cells. Once completed, this effort, called the Cancer Genome Atlas, will dwarf the Human Genome Project in its scope. The sequencing effort involves dozens of teams of researchers across the world. The initial list of cancers to be sequenced includes brain, lung, pancreatic, and ovarian cancer. The Human Genome Project will provide the normal genome, against which cancer’s abnormal genome can be juxtaposed and contrasted. The result, as Francis Collins, the leader of the Human Genome Project describes it, will be a “colossal atlas” of cancer—a compendium of every gene mutated in the most common forms of cancer: “When applied to the 50 most common types of cancer, this effort could ultimately prove to be the equivalent of more than 10,000 Human Genome Projects in terms of the sheer volume of DNA to be sequenced.

The function of leadership – the number-one responsibility of a leader – is to catalyze a clear and shared vision for the organization and to secure commitment to and vigorous pursuit of that vision.  This is a universal requirement of leadership.”[11] Jim Collins

Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.

... according to a famous study by the influential management theorist Jim Collins, many of the best performing companies of the late twentieth century were run by what he calls "Level 5 Leaders." These exceptional CEOs were known not for their flash or charisma but for extreme humility coupled with intense professional will.

Test-taking ranked among Coriolanus's greatest talents, and he felt the familiar rush of excitement as he opened the cover of his booklet. He loved the challenge, and his obsessive nature meant almost instant absorption into the mental obstacle course. Three hours later, sweat-soaked, exhausted, and happy, he handed in his booklet and went to the mess hall for ice. He sat in the strip of shade his barrack provided, rubbing the cubes over his body and reviewing the questions in his head. The ache of losing his university career returned briefly, but he pushed it away with thoughts of becoming a legendary military leader like his father. Maybe this had been his destiny all along.

Finnick Odair, the sex symbol from the fishing district, who kept Peeta alive in the arena when I couldn’t. They want to transform Finnick into a rebel leader as well, but first they’ll have to get him to stay awake for more than five minutes. Even when he is conscious, you have to say everything to him three times to get through to his brain.

Those who worked with these leaders tended to describe them with the following words: quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated. The lesson, says Collins, is clear. We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

Write! Write! Write! Never underestimate the power of the written word. Few company leaders make good use of the most powerful human tool—the pen. Use it. People will read what you write because you’re the leader, and they’ll be influenced by it. Think of how much weaker the United States would be if the Constitution had never been written down.

Collins, echoing Ed Catmull, “What separates people is the return on luck, what you do with it when you get it. What matters is how you play the hand you’re dealt.” He continues, “You don’t leave the game, until it’s not your choice. Steve Jobs had great luck at arriving at the birth of an industry. Then he had bad luck in getting booted out. But Steve played whatever hand he was dealt to the best of his ability. Sometimes you create the hand, by giving yourself challenges that will make you stronger, where you don’t even know what’s next. That’s the beauty of the story. Steve’s almost like the Tom Hanks character in Castaway—just keep breathing because you don’t know what the tide will bring in tomorrow.

There are three things you need to be considered a truly great company, Collins continues, switching gears to Apple. Number one, you have to deliver superior financial results. Number two, you have to make a distinctive impact, to the point where if you didn't exist you couldn't be easily replaced. Number three, the company must have lasting endurance, beyond multiple generations of technology, markets, and cycles, and it must demonstrate the ability to do this beyond a single leader. Apple has numbers one and two. Steve was racing the clock [to help it get number three]. Whether it has lasting endurance is the final check, something we won't know for some time. There are lots of good people there, and maybe they'll get it.

We were surprised, shocked really, to discover the type of leadership required for turning a good company into a great one. Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They are more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

Over two thousand people died in that vicious intramural bloodletting. While the Jews of Palestine were developing the young leaders and the social institutions that would be their greatest resource, Haj Amin Husseini methodically deprived the Arabs of theirs. Throttling progress and any drift to rational thought with his angry fanaticism, cowing with the guns of his ignorant villagers the educated elite, he reduced a generation of Arab leadership to fear and silence.

The leaders of good-to-great companies did not first focus on creating a vision or over-arching goal. Instead, they made sure to first get the best, brightest, and hardest-working people on board, while removing those that don’t perform. Once they had the right people, they then determined where to lead their companies. In other words, their guiding principle is to first determine the “who” before figuring out the “what”. The elite companies practiced three principles in hiring:

when he analyzed what the highest-performing companies had in common, the nature of their CEOs jumped out at him. Every single one of them was led by an unassuming man like Darwin Smith. Those who worked with these leaders tended to describe them with the following words: quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated. The lesson, says Collins, is clear. We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

But when he analyzed what the highest-performing companies had in common, the nature of their CEOs jumped out at him. Every single one of them was led by an unassuming man like Darwin Smith. Those who worked with these leaders tended to describe them with the following words: quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated. The lesson, says Collins, is clear. We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

During the Dark Days, the rebels in 13 wrested control from the government forces, trained their nuclear missiles on the Capitol, and then struck a bargain: They would play dead in exchange for being left alone. The Capitol had another nuclear arsenal out west, but it couldn’t attack 13 without certain retaliation. It was forced to accept 13’s deal. The Capitol demolished the visible remains of the district and cut off all access from the outside. Perhaps the Capitol’s leaders thought that, without help, 13 would die off on its own.

realized again that what I didn’t know was much greater than what I did, in this case not knowing how to transition out of the founder-leader role. So I reached out to some of the greatest experts I could speak with for advice. Perhaps the best advice we received came from management expert Jim Collins, who told us that “to transition well, there are only two things that you need to do: Put capable CEOs in place and have a capable governance system to replace the CEOs if they’re not capable.” That was what I had failed to do and what

Many of her male friends in the labor movement or politics found the crusade either strange or irritating. One night, Sanger and Bill Haywood, the famous labor leader, addressed a group of women strikers. An observer remembered that Sanger spoke of women’s right to limit the size of their families and “received a hearty response” from the audience. Haywood then followed, promising the women that in the glorious economy built by union labor in the future, they would be able to have “all the babies they pleased.” He was greeted by dead silence.

On June 10, 2020, Chief Arradondo told the media: “History is being written now, and I’m determined to make sure we are in the right side of history”....According to practically every measure, Arradondo left the department and the city [of Minneapolis] in shambles. He claimed to be an agent of change and reform. He was hailed as a hero by community leaders and the media. Arradondo was basically given a free pass despite his catastrophic failures. In case anybody was wondering what side of history Arradondo was on, the facts speak for themselves.

David Maxwell, like Darwin Smith and Colman Mockler, exemplified a key trait of Level 5 leaders: ambition first and foremost for the company and concern for its success rather than for one’s own riches and personal renown. Level 5 leaders want to see the company even more successful in the next generation, comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to their efforts. As one Level 5 leader said, “I want to look out from my porch at one of the great companies in the world someday and be able to say, ‘I used to work there.

lumber from the Black Hills National Forest. We have plenty of spare metal laying around in the junkyard, so we can build this with no problems,” “Uh, won’t the Sioux get kinda mad about us taking trees?” “I had to talk with the Sioux leader, John Running Elk, and he was fine with it as long as the lumber company stayed away from the Crazy Horse Memorial and the lands around it. They too have been preparing for the eventual crazy days ahead if the U.S. government does actually collapse, since it is apparent that Collins doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, in spite of Wall Street crashing and the military openly saying they want to get rid of him. Next question,

The autonomy this Paris command gave him was a new experience for von Choltitz. Until now, he had always been firmly locked inside Germany's impersonal military machine. His decisions, with the exception of minor tactical ones, had always been made for him. Now, at the very moment at which his visit to Rastenburg [where he met Hitler & was ordered to Paris] had jarred his confidence in the Third Reich and its leader, circumstances had placed von Choltitz in a command in which he had to make decisions. He preferred to postpone them. Nordling's suggestion offered him that chance. If, he told Nordling, the commanders at the Prefecture of Police could demonstrate in an hour's trial that they could control their men, he would agree to discuss a cease-fire for the city.

Collins hadn’t set out to make a point about quiet leadership. When he started his research, all he wanted to know was what characteristics made a company outperform its competition. He selected eleven standout companies to research in depth. Initially he ignored the question of leadership altogether, because he wanted to avoid simplistic answers. But when he analyzed what the highest-performing companies had in common, the nature of their CEOs jumped out at him. Every single one of them was led by an unassuming man like Darwin Smith. Those who worked with these leaders tended to describe them with the following words: quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated. The lesson, says Collins, is clear. We don’t need giant personalities to transform companies. We need leaders who build not their own egos but the institutions they run.

Cultivate Level 5 Leadership Our research showed that having charismatic leadership doesn’t explain why some companies become great and others don’t. In fact, some of the most disastrous comparison cases had very strong, charismatic leadership in the very era that the companies fell or failed. Rather, our research found that the critical ingredient is Level 5 leadership. The essence of Level 5 leadership is a paradoxical combination of personal humility and indomitable will. The humility expressed at Level 5 isn’t a false humbleness; it’s a subjugation of personal ego in service to a cause beyond oneself. This humility is combined with the fierce resolve to do whatever it takes (no matter how difficult) to best serve that cause. Level 5 leaders are incredibly ambitious, but they channel their ambition into building a great team or organization and accomplishing a shared mission that’s ultimately not about them.

Entrenched myth: Successful leaders in a turbulent world are bold, risk-seeking visionaries. Contrary finding: The best leaders we studied did not have a visionary ability to predict the future. They observed what worked, figured out why it worked, and built upon proven foundations. They were not more risk taking, more bold, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons. They were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. Entrenched myth: Innovation distinguishes 10X companies in a fast-moving, uncertain, and chaotic world. Contrary finding: To our surprise, no. Yes, the 10X cases innovated, a lot. But the evidence does not support the premise that 10X companies will necessarily be more innovative than their less successful comparisons; and in some surprise cases, the 10X cases were less innovative. Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card we expected; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline. Entrenched myth: A threat-filled world favors the speedy; you’re either the quick or the dead. Contrary finding: The idea that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action”—and that we should embrace an overall ethos of “Fast! Fast! Fast!”—is a good way to get killed. 10X leaders figure out when to go fast, and when not to. Entrenched myth: Radical change on the outside requires radical change on the inside. Contrary finding: The 10X cases changed less in reaction to their changing world than the comparison cases. Just because your environment is rocked by dramatic change does not mean that you should inflict radical change upon yourself. Entrenched myth: Great enterprises with 10X success have a lot more good luck. Contrary finding: The 10X companies did not generally have more luck than the comparisons. Both sets had luck—lots of luck, both good and bad—in comparable amounts. The critical question is not whether you’ll have luck, but what you do with the luck that you get.

Leaders die, products become obsolete, markets change, new technologies emerge, and management fads come and go, but core ideology in a great company endures as a source of guidance and inspiration.

his attitude towards the Treaty was similarly influenced by his determination to show that he, not Collins, was the real Irish leader. Hence the President’s refusal to accept the Treaty even under the terms urged upon him by Sean T. O’Kelly.

Building with Its Face Blown Off How suddenly the private is revealed in a bombed-out city, how the blue and white striped wallpaper of a second story bedroom is now exposed to the lightly falling snow as if the room had answered the explosion wearing only its striped pajamas. Some neighbors and soldiers poke around in the rubble below and stare up at the hanging staircase, the portrait of a grandfather, a door dangling from a single hinge. And the bathroom looks almost embarrassed by its uncovered ochre walls, the twisted mess of its plumbing, the sink sinking to its knees, the ripped shower curtain, the torn goldfish trailing bubbles. It's like a dollhouse view as if a child on its knees could reach in and pick up the bureau, straighten a picture. Or it might be a room on a stage in a play with no characters, no dialogue or audience, no beginning, middle, and end– just the broken furniture in the street, a shoe among the cinder blocks, a light snow still falling on a distant steeple, and people crossing a bridge that still stands. And beyong that–crows in a tree, the statue of a leader on a horse, and clouds that look like smoke, and even farther on, in another country on a blanket under a shade tree, a man pouring wine into two glasses and a woman sliding out the wooden pegs of a wicker hamper filled with bread, cheese, and several kinds of olives.

Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with going from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.

Even though many people think that being a great leader means being ambitious and having a certain reputation, this is not true at all.

The leaders of good-to-great companies did not focus first on creating a vision or over-arching goal. Instead, they made sure to first get the best, brightest, and hardest-working people on board, while removing those that weren’t performing.

The “yes-men” problem is mentioned here. The author says that even though “yes-people” can be pleasing to a leader, they will be disastrous in the long term because they serve to obscure the real problems. The

Yes, leadership is about vision. But leadership is equally about creating a climate where the truth is heard and the brutal facts confronted. There’s a huge difference between the opportunity to “have your say” and the opportunity to be heard. The good-to-great leaders understood this distinction, creating a culture wherein people had a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard.

Level 5 leaders: ambition first and foremost for the company and concern for its success rather than for one’s own riches and personal renown.

The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with “who,” rather than “what,” you can more easily adapt to a changing world.

After the Four Courts bombardment he made his way through the tunnelled buildings to the Gresham Hotel where he found Art O’Connor, de Valera, Robert Barton, Countess Markievicz, Austin Stack, Oscar Traynor and Brugha, ‘all apparently without purpose’.3 The anti-Treaty leaders were courageous, but woefully bad tacticians, disorganised and lacking any overall strategy.

very similar to his conduct at the Republican Convention in Chicago. There he was more concerned to show that he was the leader of Irish opinion than with the possible benefits to Ireland of the Cohalan-sponsored resolution.

Every good-to-great transition in our research began with a Level 5 leader who motivated people more with inspired standards than inspiring personality. Every 10x entrepreneurial success in our research had founders and leaders who, while sometimes colorful characters, never confused leadership with personality; they were utterly obsessed with making the company truly great and ensuring it endured beyond themselves.

Leading as a charismatic visionary—a “genius with a thousand helpers” upon whom everything depends—is time telling. Shaping a culture that can thrive far beyond any single leader is clock building.

Those who see life, business, and the pursuit of accomplishment as about finding that one big hit—the one big lucky break—fail to grasp how true greatness happens. No great company, no great career, no great body of work comes about by a single event, a single flip of the coin, a single hand played. Of course, persistence doesn’t guarantee success; and the best leaders understand that they may need to change strategies, plans, and methods on the long path to building a great company. But they also understand and live out this simple truth: Luck favors the persistent.

Searching for a single great idea upon which to build success is time telling. Building an organization that can generate many great ideas is clock building. Our research showed that leaders who build enduring great companies make the shift from time telling to clock building. Clock builders create highly replicable recipes, extensive training programs, leadership-development pipelines, and tangible mechanisms to reinforce core values.

Level 5 leaders confront the brutal facts before they set vision and strategy, and they create a climate where the truth is heard. Failure to confront the brutal facts is a precursor to catastrophic decline, always.

If you want to scale your culture, if you want to make the journey from great company to enduring great company, you must invest in building a pipeline of the right unit leaders.

they bought a retail company, Lojas Americanas, and a beer company, Brahma. Their thesis proved correct: If they had the right people with the right cultural DNA, they could deploy those right people into acquired businesses and win big. Lemann and his partners focused on building a “People Machine” to hire and train an ever-larger pool of aggressive, ambitious, young leaders for eventual deployment. Their ultimate “strategy” was to find passionate, driven young people; put them in an intense meritocratic culture; challenge them with audacious goals; and give them a stake in the outcome—what they summarized as Dream-People-Culture.

Notice three things about this definition. First, as a leader, it’s your responsibility to figure out what must be done. You might do this by your own insight and instinct or, more likely, via dialogue and debate with the right people; but however you do it, you need to get clear. Second, it’s not about getting people to do what must be done but about getting them to want to do it. Third, it’s not a science; it’s an art.

I have too many great young leaders, and I’ve got to give them really big things to do. Never underestimate the power of sustaining momentum.” And that’s when I came to fully understand how Lemann, Telles, and Sicupira had created such a powerful momentum machine. From their very earliest days operating as a tiny start-up, they obsessed over finding great people, attracting great people, developing great people. They didn’t hire principally to get people with particular skills or to fill an open position or to achieve a specific goal or to pursue a market opportunity. They inverted the entire equation, making a leap of faith that if they filled the machine with fanatically driven people, they’d ignite a virtuous cycle of momentum.

Before dinner each night the two leaders, Hopkins, and various other members of the president’s official family gathered for cocktails in the Red Room. Roosevelt sat by a tray of bottles and mixed the cocktails himself. This was a cherished part of the president’s daily routine, his “children’s hour,” as he sometimes called it, when he let the day’s tensions and stresses slip away. “He loved the ceremony of making the drinks,” said Churchill’s daughter Mary Soames; “it was rather like, ‘Look, I can do it.’ It was formidable. And you knew you were supposed to just hand him your glass, and not reach for anything else. It was a lovely performance.” Roosevelt did not take drink orders, but improvised new and eccentric concoctions, variations on the whiskey sour, Tom Collins, or old-fashioned. The drinks he identified as “martinis” were mixed with too much vermouth, and sometimes contaminated with foreign ingredients such as fruit juice or rum. Churchill, who preferred straight whiskey or brandy, accepted Roosevelt’s mysterious potions gracefully and usually drank them without complaint, though Alistair Cooke reported that the prime minister sometimes took them into the bathroom and poured them down the sink.

First Who . . . Then What. We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.

Remember that in our business we are always teaching, and a commander’s job is to develop his subordinates and teach them all he knows about the subject at hand.

The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with “who,” rather than “what,” you can more easily adapt to a changing world. If people join the bus primarily because of where it is going, what happens if you get ten miles down the road and you need to change direction? You’ve got a problem. But if people are on the bus because of who else is on the bus, then it’s much easier to change direction: “Hey, I got on this bus because of who else is on it; if we need to change direction to be more successful, fine with me.” Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. Third, if you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won’t have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

A Level 5 executive team member does not blindly acquiesce to authority and is a strong leader in her own right, so driven and talented that she builds her arena into one of the very best in the world. Yet each team member must also have the ability to meld that strength into doing whatever it takes to make the company great.

discovered the X factor of good-to-great leadership. It is the principle of Level 5. Level 5 is the highest level in a hierarchy of capability ranging from Level 1 (individual skills) to Level 2 (teamwork skills) to Level 3 (management skills) to Level 4 (leadership skills). At Level 5, a leader applies all the skills from Levels 1 through 4 in service to a cause larger than self, and does so with a paradoxical blend of personal humility and indomitable will.

Seven Elements of Leadership Style In this chapter, we’ve identified the elements of style that are common among effective leaders. They are: Authenticity Decisiveness Focus Personal Touch Hard/Soft People Skills Communication Ever Forward

True leadership only exists if people follow when they would otherwise have the freedom to not follow. Many business leaders think they’re leading when in fact they’re simply exercising power,

this chapter, we’ve identified the elements of style that are common among effective leaders. They are: Authenticity Decisiveness Focus Personal Touch Hard/Soft People Skills Communication Ever Forward

people worried more about the leader—what he would say, what he would think, what he would do— than they worried about external reality and what it could

The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more

The poet Archilochus wrote, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In Good to Great, Collins demonstrates that great organizations live and breathe from a hedgehog concept. They are ruthlessly clear about the one thing at which they can be the best in the world. Organizations that act like foxes, chasing after too much too often, never achieve a singular focus. They stay stuck being “good.”4

Roman armies could move faster than the Gauls, especially over long distances, because of two advantages: superior engineering and better discipline. The Romans were not stopped by natural obstacles, because their engineers could quickly improvise a bridge across a river. The Gauls were taken by surprise because they regarded high mountain passes as impassable during winter, but Caesar’s soldiers, who were more like construction workers than soldiers, worked in teams to clear away deep snow. Gauls liked fighting but they thought the dirty work of building roads and fortifications was beneath their dignity as warriors. Romans did everything they were asked because their troops were highly disciplined. Roman soldiers knew that the faster they did these routine tasks, the more surely they would win, even against armies much bigger than themselves.

Whereas the good-to-great companies had Level 5 leaders who built an enduring culture of discipline, the unsustained comparisons had Level 4 leaders who personally disciplined the organization through sheer force.

Entrenched myth: Successful leaders in a turbulent world are bold, risk-seeking visionaries. Contrary finding: The best leaders we studied did not have a visionary ability to predict the future. They observed what worked, figured out why it worked, and built upon proven foundations. They were not more risk taking, more bold, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons. They were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid.

The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts.

Jim Collins describes his own version of Virtuoso leadership in what he calls the Level 5 leader, someone who “builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”2 Collins tells us that, while he believes many individuals with the potential to be Level 5 leaders exist in our world, they’re difficult to spot because their humility prevents them from taking credit for the positive results of their superb leadership. He says, “Our research exposed Level 5 as a key component inside the black box of what it takes to shift a company from good to great.

Management guru Jim Collins has some good words here. He and Morten T. Hansen studied leadership in turbulent times. They looked at more than twenty thousand companies, sifting through data in search of an answer to this question: Why in uncertain times do some companies thrive while others do not? They concluded, “[Successful leaders] are not more creative. They’re not more visionary. They’re not more charismatic. They’re not more ambitious. They’re not more blessed by luck. They’re not more risk-seeking. They’re not more heroic. And they’re not more prone to making big, bold moves.” Then what sets them apart? “They all led their teams with a surprising method of self-control in an out-of-control world.”2

(Jobs sardonically said that the charity world was a good place for Bill Gates, since he didn’t have anything really creative to do with his time.)

Collins believes this restlessness is far more important and powerful than simple ambition or raw intelligence. It is the foundation of resilience, and self-motivation. It is fueled by curiosity, the ache to build something meaningful, and a sense of purpose to make the most of one’s entire life.

The church members slowly made their way out of the church, since all of them were over seventy, where they were directed to the church bus that hadn’t been used in nearly fifteen years. Johnston turned to Ellison and asked, “When is President Collins going to declare his dictatorship?” “What makes you think he’s going to do such a thing?” “Because every time a leader starts rounding up the opposition, it’s inevitable that he’ll declare that he’s the sole person in power. Just watch, you’ll see,” “You Christians think you know everything. Get on the bus.

Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is “time telling”; building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple product life cycles is “clock building.

If you have Level 5 leaders who get the right people on the bus, if you confront the brutal facts of reality, if you create a climate where the truth is heard, if you have a Council and work within the three circles, if you frame all decisions in the context of a crystalline Hedgehog Concept, if you act from understanding, not bravado—if you do all these things, then you are likely to be right on the big decisions.

Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas

Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy—these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They

THE COURAGE TO SAY NO Early in our development as leaders we assume that when opportunity knocks, we must answer the door and embrace whoever or whatever is standing there. But Mike Nappa was right when he wrote, “Opportunity does not equal obligation.”15 The ability to identify and focus on the few necessary things is a hallmark of great leadership. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins encourages business leaders to develop a “stop doing” list: Most of us lead busy but undisciplined lives. We have ever expanding “to do” lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing—and doing more. And it rarely works. Those who built the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of “stop doing” lists as the “to do” lists. They displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.… They displayed remarkable courage to channel their resources into only one or a few arenas.16

We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it.

Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence - more plow horse than show horse.

The most effective leaders of companies in transition are the quiet, unassuming people whose inner wiring is such that the worst circumstances bring out their best. They're unflappable; they're ready to die if they have to. But you can trust that, when bad things are happening, they will become clearheaded and focused. -Jim Collins