This has been on my shelf for as long as I can remember. I have probably read it three or four times over the years. In my mind, it is one of the best business / leadership books out there. It looks at public companies in the Fortune 500 that beat the market and its competitors over a sustained period of time. The book analyzes those companies and tries to explain why they went from good to great. It is not necessarily the smoothest read, but the lessons in the book are invaluable.
Rather than over scrutinize the book on this blog, I am going to change it up and share some of my favorite points / takeaways / stories. Here we go:
Getting the right people on the bus - You can teach farmers how to make steel, but you can't teach a "farmer work ethic" to people who don't have it in the first place (page 50).
Building red flag mechanisms - A company used a system called "short pay" to allow customers full discretionary power to decide whether and how much to pay on an invoice based on his own subjective evaluation of how satisfied he feels with a product or service...this allowed for an early warning system that forces an adjustment, long before they would lose that customer (page 79).
The Stockdale Paradox - Admiral Stockdale was a prisoner of war for eight years during the Vietnam War. When asked who didn't get out, he responded "The optimists. The ones who said 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart." He followed up by saying "You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end - which you can never afford to lose - with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality." (page 85)
Culture of discipline - Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus, which then increases the percentage of wrong people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which then further drives the right people away (page 121).
Stop doing list - Many of us have ever-expanding "to do" lists, but good-to-great companies made as much use of "stop doing" lists as "to do" lists. Unplug from the extraneous junk (page 139).
Have a core ideology - 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 (page 194).
Coaching example - A cross-country coach was burdened with expectations to do "fun programs" and "rah-rah stuff" to motivate the kids and keep them interested - parties, special trips, inspirational speeches. She quickly put an end to nearly all that distracting and time-consuming activity. Her program was build on the idea that running is fun, racing is fun, improving is fun, and winning is fun. If you're not passionate about what we do, then go find something else to do (page 206).
Why greatness? - The question is not why, but how. 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. What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness? (page 209)
A long list, but very thought provoking and applicable to many phases of life, not just business.
My rating for Good to Great: 4.5 stars out of 5. Get it here!
P.S. Throughout this year, I am going to re-read some of the best books on my bookshelf that have not appeared on the blog.
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