Jim Collins Quotes

Perfect is the enemy of good.

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.

Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.

Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.

For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.

Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.

Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment.

By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.

When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you’ve had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.

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.

Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.

Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.

I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.

A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

If you have more than 3 priorities then you don’t have any.” —Jim Collins

Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice.

What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.

Consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you.

It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don't you invest more time being interested?" Collin's advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.

Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.

Visionary companies are so clear about what they stand for and what they’re trying to achieve that they simply don’t have room for those unwilling or unable to fit their exacting standards.

Visionary companies pursue a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one—and not necessarily the primary one.

Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth.... That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast. —VIKTOR E. FRANKL, Man’s Search for Meaning

Indeed, the real question is not, “Why greatness?” but “What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, “Why should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough?” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work.

Visionary companies make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and—quite literally—accident. What looks in retrospect like brilliant foresight and preplanning was often the result of “Let’s just try a lot of stuff and keep what works.

If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.

As Jim Collins observes in Good to Great, first you need to get “the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.” Only then do you turn the wheel and step on the gas.

Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?” —Marshall Bruce Mathers III, “Lose Yourself”1

They didn’t use discussion as a sham process to let people “have their say” so that they could “buy in” to a predetermined decision. The process was more like a heated scientific debate, with people engaged in a search for the best answers.

...it is better to understand who you are than where you are going—for where you are going will almost certainly change.

If you have more than 3 priorities, you don’t have any.” -  Jim Collins

Good to Great by my friend Jim Collins.

One thing to be careful of with regard to skills is what author Jim Collins calls “the curse of competence.” It’s the idea that sometimes we become good at doing something we’re not really talented in or passionate about. As my father often says, “Your current skill-set may or may not correspond with your natural talents.” We need to make certain that the skills we develop don’t limit or define us. At the end of the day, talent provides a deeper well than skills.

As Jim Collins said in our April 2010 SUCCESS feature, “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any.

Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.

Uriel smiled. "Collin, like the others, is wit me because he is not yet prepared to face what comes next. When he is, he'll take that step. For now, he is not." "When you say what comes next, what do you mean, exactly?" "The part involving words like forever, eternity, and judgment." "Oh," I said. "What Comes Next.

When in doubt, vary, change, solve the problem, seize the opportunity, experiment, try something new (consistent, of course, with the core ideology)—even if you can’t predict precisely how things will turn out. Do something. If one thing fails, try another. Fix. Try. Do. Adjust. Move. Act. No matter what, don’t sit still.

Jim Collins, the author of the business classic Good to Great, was once told by Peter Drucker that he could either build a great company or build great ideas but not both. Jim chose ideas. As a result of this trade-off there are still only three full-time employees in his company, yet his ideas have reached tens of millions of people through his writing.8

A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness.

wouldn’t that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling the time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone?3

greatness is first and foremost a matter of conscious choice and discipline.

It didn’t matter how bleak the situation or how stultifying their mediocrity, they all maintained unwavering faith that they would not just survive, but prevail as a great company. And yet, at the same time, they became relentlessly disciplined at confronting the most brutal facts of their current reality.

For a truly great company, the Big Thing is never any specific line of business or product or idea or invention. The Big Thing is your underlying flywheel architecture, properly conceived

When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.

Deep restlessness is far more important and powerful than simple ambition or raw intelligence. It is the foundation of resilience and self motivation.

Whether someone is the ‘right person’ has more to do with character traits and innate capabilities than with specific knowledge, background or skills.

How many companies have you encountered that articulate a clear ideology at the start of the company, yet cannot articulate a clear idea of what products to make?

In business, real discipline comes in saying no to the wrong opportunities.” —Jim Collins

Great organizations understand the difference between their core values and purpose (which almost never change), and operating strategies and cultural practices (which endlessly adapt to a changing world).

Jim Collins, in his bestselling book Good to Great, demonstrates through massive research and comprehensive analysis that when it comes to CEO succession, internal candidates dramatically outperform external candidates. The core reason is knowledge. Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.

Jim Collins explores what went wrong in companies that were once darlings of Wall Street but later collapsed.3 He finds that for many, falling into “the undisciplined pursuit of more” was a key reason for failure.

if you want to achieve consistent performance, you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound, a hurdle that you jump over and a ceiling that you will not rise above, the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back.  

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

The flywheel, when properly conceived and executed, creates both continuity and change. On the one hand, you need to stay with a flywheel long enough to get its full compounding effect. On the other hand, to keep the flywheel spinning, you need to continually renew, and improve each and every component.

Business author Jim Collins once said that “good is the enemy of great… We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.

... 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.

by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined

The longer we’re alive, the more friends —- and adversaries —- we create, and collect. - Jim Brass

Good is the enemy of great.

No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.

What matters most is how well you understand your flywheel and how well you execute on each component over a long series of iterations.

Each turn builds upon previous work as you make a series of good decisions, supremely well executed, that compound one upon another. This is how you build greatness.

You are the average of the five people you spend most time with. - Jim Rohn

In no case do we have a company that just happened to be sitting on the nose cone of a rocket when it took off.

The best students are those who never quite believe their professors.

My dad—Victoria’s grandfather, “Poppa Jim”, as she called him—is forever waist-deep in the warm water of the harbour, holding a body.

Freely chosen, discipline is absolute freedom.

Without disagreement, you might not fully understand the problem. Without unified commitment, you’ll almost certainly fail to execute.

Good-to-great management teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind decisions, regardless of parochial interests.

the greatest danger in business and life lies not in outright failure but in achieving success without understanding why you were successful in the first place.

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

People arrived and there was eating, drinking, dancing and misunderstandings between all the couples, married and unmarried. Frank Schwake wouldn’t talk to his wife, Jean. Jim Collins quarreled in a corner with his wife, Sheila. There was still a coolness between Alberta and me and between Brian and Joyce. Other couples were affected and there were islands of tension all over the apartment. The night would have been ruined except for the way we all united against an outside danger.

The lines between need and want are continually and intentionally blurred. Years ago, a pal of mine had bought a new video camera. It was the best of the best and he was filming every moment of his young son’s life. In a burst of enthusiasm he said: “You know, Jim, you just can’t raise a child properly without one of these!” Ah, no. Actually you can. In fact, billions of children have been raised over the course of human history without ever having been videotaped. And horrific as it may sound, many still are today. Including my 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

In the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you’ve had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.” —Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t

Then it began to dawn on us: There was no miracle moment. Although it may have looked like a single-stroke breakthrough to those peering in from the outside, it was anything but that to people experiencing transformation from within. Rather, it was a quiet, deliberate process of figuring out what needed to be done to create the best future results and then simply taking those steps, one after the other, turn by turn of the flywheel. After pushing on that flywheel in a consistent direction over an extended period of time, they'd inevitably hit a point of breakthrough.

The Hedgehog Concept comes from the Greek fable about the fox and the hedgehog: while the wily fox knows many things, the simple hedgehog only knows one thing, but that one knowledge bite is highly impactful in protecting itself against danger. Discovering that simple but essential element is what created the success of the good-to-great companies.

Bezos had seemingly made up his mind that he was no longer going to indulge in financial maneuvering as a way to escape the rather large hole Amazon had dug for itself, and it wasn’t just through borrowing Sinegal’s business plan. At a two-day management and board offsite later that year, Amazon invited business thinker Jim Collins to present the findings from his soon-to-be-published book Good to Great. Collins had studied the company and led a series of intense discussions at the offsite. “You’ve got to decide what you’re great at,” he told the Amazon executives. Drawing on Collins’s concept of a flywheel, or self-reinforcing loop, Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believed powered their business. It went something like this: Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned, and it should accelerate the loop. Amazon executives were elated; according to several members of the S Team at the time, they felt that, after five years, they finally understood their own business. But when Warren Jenson asked Bezos if he should put the flywheel in his presentations to analysts, Bezos asked him not to. For now, he considered it the secret sauce.

There are two possible explanations for a stalled or stuck flywheel. Possible explanation #1: The underlying flywheel is just fine, but you’re failing to innovate and execute brilliantly on every single component; the flywheel needs to be reinvigorated. Possible explanation #2: The underlying flywheel no longer fits reality and must be changed in some significant way. It’s imperative that you make the right diagnosis.

If you know the failure paths of the job, identify them. Be honest and open—tell a person where the quicksand is and where the wild animals are. You don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel every day. Let people learn from your mistakes or the mistakes of others. Point out the potential failure paths, what not to do, but don’t tell them what to do. Keep the responsibility for results with them—to do whatever is necessary within the guidelines.

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.

If you are a prospective entrepreneur with the desire to start and build a visionary company but have not yet taken the plunge because you don’t have a “great idea”, we encourage you to lift from your shoulders the burden of the great-idea myth. Indeed, the evidence suggests that it might be better to not obsess on finding a great idea before launching a company. Why? because the great-idea approach shifts your attention away from seeing the company as your ultimate creation.

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:

In the end, Mockler and the board were proved right, stunningly so. If a shareflipper had accepted the 44 percent price premium offered by Ronald Perelman on October 31, 1986, and then invested the full amount in the general market for ten years, through the end of 1996, he would have come out three times worse off than a shareholder who had stayed with Mockler and Gillette.20 Indeed, the company, its customers, and the shareholders would have been ill served had Mockler capitulated to the raiders, pocketed his millions, and retired to a life of leisure.

Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was... just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But...it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since [1945].... And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.

Enduring great companies don’t exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed, in a truly great company, profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point of life.

The most important decisions that businesspeople make are not what decisions, but who decisions. —JIM COLLINS, AUTHOR OF GOOD TO GREAT

Establishing your core priorities is, unfortunately, not the same as binding yourself to them.     •  MIT study: Managers had done no work on their core priorities in the previous week! 5. To carve out space to pursue our core priorities, we must go on the offense against lesser priorities.     •  On the USS Benfold, the crew actively fought the List B items like repainting (e.g., by using stainless-steel bolts that wouldn’t leave rust stains).     •  Jim Collins’s “stop-doing list”: What will you give up so that you have more time to spend on your priorities?     •  Bregman’s hourly beep: Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now? Widen Your Options Reality-Test Your Assumptions Attain Distance Before Deciding Prepare to Be Wrong

Vivimos una era de conformismo. Nos hemos acostumbrado a hacer lo mínimo posible, a esforzarnos lo imprescindible para obtener buenos resultados. Hacemos lo que se nos pide y evitamos los riesgos. Actuamos “a demanda”, condicionados por creencias que nos han impuesto. Si las cosas salen más o menos bien, consideramos que la tarea está cumplida, que hemos actuado bien. Si es bueno, alcanza. Y nos conformamos con eso. Este estilo de vida aplicado a una empresa la transforma en mediocre y la paraliza. Una empresa que solo es buena siempre está en el mismo lugar, no crece ni mejora. Existe la posibilidad de pegar el salto, de transitar el camino “de buena a grandiosa”. Allí están los grandes resultados.

¿Cuál es nuestra pasión? ¿Cuál es nuestro motor económico? ¿Qué es lo que mejor podemos hacer en el mundo? Ese es el estilo de pensamiento que lleva a una empresa a sobresalir.

They do say that people come in to your life for a reason. Either their purpose is to teach you something of value or you’re there to teach them something,’ said Carruthers.

Good to Great and Built to Last, both by Jim Collins, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish, and a bunch of books by Patrick Lencioni: The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business, Death by Meeting, and Five Dysfunctions of the Team: A Leadership Fable.

what truly set the big winners apart was their ability to turn initial success into a sustained flywheel, even if they started out behind the pioneers.

do. Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better. - Jim Rohn     You've

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 outsized egos and self-serving nature of the “control set” executives contributed to the deaths of their own companies.

Good is the enemy of great