Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

This book is far from a 10 bullets quick fix, it is based on 5 years of thorough research and analysis of companies that changed dramatically their performance. These companies were not initially great, some of them had several years of history with poor of mediocre performance.

Amongst the Fortune 500, a tenfold companies from different industries were carefully selected and compared to competitors. The deep analysis looks at leadership, people, vision and business model from several dimensions and formulates the underlying patterns and ideas with great insight.

Jim Collins introduces many good metaphors including the "flywheel effect" Common to all these companies were a lot of processes going on from the inside before the outside world saw the effect. Like a chicken growing invisibly inside and egg to finally crack out some day. The study captures what went on inside the egg, before it cracked.

“The real question is not `how do we motivate people ?`If you have the right people, they will be self-motivated. The key is not to de-motivate them. One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal facts of reality”

“Enduring great companies don't exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed in a truly great company profits and cash flow becomes like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life, but they are not the very point in life”

After reading this book you will be convinced that just settle for good is not good enough - it must be nothing less than Great.