Quotes from James C. Collins

Be there first, be there fast, build market share—no matter how expensive—and you win," yelled the entrepreneurs.

Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck." —Roald Amundsen, The South Pole1

Avoid matrix structures. In an attempt to have the best of both worlds, some companies make the mistake of creating matrix organizations. Don't do this. Matrix structures remove the fire of personal ownership, not to mention accountability.

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. Yes, turning good into great takes energy, but the building of momentum adds more energy back into the pool than it takes out. Conversely, perpetuating mediocrity is an inherently depressing process and drains much more energy out of the pool than it puts back in.

The Stockdale Paradox Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. AND at the same time Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

Spending time and energy trying to "motivate" people is a waste of effort. The real question is not, "How do we motivate our people?" If you have the right people, they will be self-motivated. The key is to not de-motivate them. One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal facts of reality.

In another, drawn directly from his own comments on leading change, the word I appears forty-four times ("I could lead the charge"; "I wrote the twelve objectives"; "I presented and explained the objectives"), whereas the word we appears just sixteen times.

The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving."38

If you create a place where the best people always have a seat on the bus, they're more likely to support changes in direction. For

This brings us to a central truth about organizations: they are inherently messy. There are no panaceas, no structures that solve all problems. Any attempts to completely eliminate the mess are doomed to failure. Yes, there are costly inefficiencies in decentralization, but the fire of personal ownership—of being our own little business—elevates human motivation and stimulates innovation in powerful, albeit somewhat chaotic, ways.

Leaders of great companies are always moving forward—progressing—as individuals (personal growth) and they pass this ever forward psychology along to the company. They have a high energy level and never become complacent.

We all snickered at some writers who viewed Dad [Sam Walton] as a grand strategist who intuitively developed complex plans and implemented them with precision. Dad thrived on change, and no decision was ever sacred.

We know some effective leaders who work only 40–50 hours a week, but who we nonetheless classify as very hard workers—their level of intensity and concentration when at work is incredibly high. Conversely, we know some workaholics who work 90 hours per week and are basically ineffective. More is not necessarily better.

Put objective, honest outsiders on your board of directors.

unproductive retirees. Take care of yourself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Get enough sleep. Stay healthy. Get some exercise. Have diversions. Read. Converse with interesting people. Expose yourself to new ideas. Spend time in solitary, renewing activities. Set new challenges for yourself. Do whatever is necessary to keep yourself vibrant, stimulated, growing, and alive as a human being.

It's not how you compensate your executives, it's which executives you have to compensate in the first place. If you have the right executives on the bus, they will do everything within their power to build a great company, not because of what they will "get" for it, but because they simply cannot imagine settling for anything less. Their

As the influential management thinker Peter Drucker taught, the best—perhaps even the only—way to predict the future is to create it.10

Multiply, vary, let the strongest [experiments] win, and the weakest die.

Psychological research has shown that the most productive and happy people have a basically optimistic view of the future. We believe the same is true of companies

One of the distinguishing characteristics of a great company is that it doesn't stop trying to change, improve, and do new things. A great company never arrives, never believes that it is good enough.

planful opportunism

If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.

businesses. We will not make unrelated acquisitions. We will not do unrelated joint ventures. If it doesn't fit, we don't do it. Period.

A leader speaks to the finer qualities we all possess and challenges people to express these qualities. Ultimately, a leader changes people. Again, we return to our analogy of leader-as-teacher, and we ask you to think about the teachers who have changed your life. Chances are they helped you to see more in yourself than you had seen before. They tapped something inside you that sparked new perceptions of yourself, new expectations of yourself; your ideals for yourself rose to a new level.