Quotes from Jim Collins

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.  

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

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

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

Freely chosen, discipline is absolute freedom.

This can only be accomplished by people who live, breathe, eat and sleep what they are doing.... [I am] associated with a large group of knowledgeable, dedicated [people] who eat, breathe, and sleep the world of aeronautics.... Man's objective should be opportunity for greater accomplishment and greater service. The greatest pleasure life has to offer is the satisfaction that flows from... participating in a difficult and constructive undertaking.50

My God, these guys don't even know what the return-on-investment will be on this thing.

Peter Drucker once observed that the drive for mergers and acquisitions comes less from sound reasoning and more from the fact that doing deals is a much more exciting way to spend your day than doing actual work.35

Stop doing lists are more important thanto do lists.

Gente boa precisa ter coisas grandes para fazer, senão leva sua energia criativa para outro lugar.

As melhores pessoas anseiam pela meritocracia, enquanto as pessoas medíocres tem medo dela.

O melhor sinal da riqueza não é manter uma agenda lotada, mas ter tempo disponível para se concentrar no que é importante.

Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great

Consensus decisions are often at odds with intelligent decisions.

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.