Quotes from James C. Collins

Even though many people think that being a great leader means being ambitious and having a certain reputation, this is not true at all.

To be rigorous means consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management. To be rigorous, not ruthless, means that the best people need not worry about their positions and can concentrate fully on their work.

And while you must create robust new extensions to your flywheel (and given enough time, you might even create entirely new flywheels) be sure to keep building momentum with your winning strategies. Never forget, the Next Big Thing is very likely the Big Thing you already have. Make the most of your victories. Keep turning the flywheel.

If the company doesn't hit its forecasts, cash is tied up in inventory. Cash is like blood or oxygen; without it, you die. And growth eats cash. This is why roughly half of all bankruptcies occur after a year of record sales.

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

What is the purpose of budgeting? Most

The Marine Corps recruits people who share the corps' values, then provides them with the training required to

the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality.

Hedgehog Concept—disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great. Technology can accelerate a transformation, but technology cannot cause a transformation.

If you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

the single most important skill for building a great company is making superb people decisions. Without the right people, you simply cannot build a great company, period.

No company can grow revenues consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company.

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.

circles and getting rid of everything else.

These studies looked at people who had suffered serious adversity—cancer patients, prisoners of war, accident victims, and so forth—and survived. They found that people fell generally into three categories: those who were permanently dispirited by the event, those who got their life back to normal, and those who used the experience as a defining event that made them stronger.53

Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: 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.

Sustained great results depend upon building a culture full of self-disciplined people who take disciplined action, fanatically consistent with the three circles.

A good rule of thumb is a 10- to 25-year horizon, perhaps longer if the mission is particularly challenging. Of course, some missions can be fulfilled faster than ten years, and it may be appropriate and effective to have a short time frame. Whatever time-length mission you set, be sure to recognize when you've fulfilled it and, most important, set a new one. Otherwise, you may fall into one of the most dangerous of traps: the "We've Arrived Syndrome.

Turning Goals into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms," Harvard Business Review, July–August, 1999.

But what I find so striking is their incredible simplicity.

part, always great," he said. "They never had to turn themselves from good companies into great companies. They had parents like David

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 have Level 5 leaders who get the right people on the bus, if you confront the brutal facts of reality, if you create a climate where the truth is heard, if you have a Council and work within the three circles, if you frame all decisions in the context of a crystalline Hedgehog Concept, if you act from understanding, not bravado—if you do all these things, then you are likely to be right on the big decisions.