Quotes from James C. Collins

The evidence does not support the idea that you need an outside leader to come in and shake up the place to go from good to great. In fact, going for a high-profile outside change agent is negatively correlated with a sustained transformation from good to great.

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.

Consensus does not equal unanimity! Too many managers have interpreted consensus to mean 100% unanimity. Not every person must agree with the decision for there to be consensus; there only needs to be general agreement. General agreement is significantly higher than a 51% majority, but usually falls short of 100% unanimity. It is something that is sensed, rather than quantified. Once a consensus is reached, those who disagreed during the process must agree or get off the ship.

So, the question of Why greatness? is almost a nonsense question. If you're engaged in work that you love and care about, for whatever reason, then the question needs no answer. The question is not why, but how.

In general, the most effective leaders tend to make extensive use of participative decision making. The best decisions are made with some degree of participation—no one is brilliant or experienced enough to have all the answers. No one.

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 are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results.

Doesn't a group process invite disagreement among group members— disagreement that can be uncomfortable and difficult to resolve? Yes. And this is good. To repeat: disagreement during the decision-making process is good. In making important decisions, it's wise to have constructive argument and differing points of view. Disagreement will clarify the issues and produce a more thought-out solution. Without disagreement, you probably don't fully understand the problem.

Truly great companies understand the difference between what should never change and what should be open for change, between what is genuinely sacred and what is not.

Do not ask, What core values should we hold? Ask instead, What core values do we truly and passionately hold?

the primary challenge you face is not in increasing creativity per se, but in making your company receptive to the vast amounts of creativity that already exist. The point is not to build a company that depends on you for its innovation, but to continually work towards an organization that is as receptive to new ideas as if those ideas had come from you.

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

The point is not what core values you have, but that you have core values at all, that you know what they are, that you build them explicitly into the organization, and that you preserve them over time.

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. WINSTON S. CHURCHILL

Shared vision is the crucial link in making decentralization work.

turning good into great takes energy, but the building of momentum adds more energy back into the pool than it takes out.

those who strive to turn good into great find the process no more painful or exhausting than those who settle for just letting things wallow along in mind-numbing mediocrity.

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.

shareholder wealth" is the standard "off-the-shelf" purpose for those organizations that have not yet identified their true core purpose. It is a substitute ideology, and a weak substitute at that. Listen to people in great organizations talk about their achievements and you'll hear very little about earnings per share.

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

Overcome lack of centralized control with increased communication and informal coordination. People need to know what other decentralized sub-units are doing so that they can act in concert with them.

Have an open system. People operating autonomously can make good decisions only if they have good information. One of the best ways to achieve this is to make lots of information available to people—even traditionally sensitive information.

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.

Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.