“From Good to Great” (in quotes) - Part 2

As promised, I post the second part of the quotations highlighted by the marker while reading one of the best (from my point of view) books about business - Jim Collins' book From Good to Great.

See also ( first part ).

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A Pitney executive meeting at the beginning of the year is usually a 15-minute discussion of last year’s results, almost always excellent, and two hours of discussing “unpleasant things” that could hinder the company's growth in the future.

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At that moment, when a leader allows himself to become the main object of concern for his employees, to the detriment of really real problems, he takes the path leading to stagnation, and maybe much worse.


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Motivating people is a waste of time. One of the main ideas of this book: if you succeed in successfully applying its findings, you will not have to spend time and energy on motivating your employees. If you have a strong team, it will have enough self-motivation and enthusiasm.

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There is a huge difference between being able to speak out and being heard.

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Lead by questions, not answers.

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Sometimes the discussions became so intense that people started jumping on each other. Shout. Waving hands, knocking on the table. The faces were filled with blood, the veins were swollen.

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The same thing went on for years, people entered Iverson’s office, raised their voices, shouted at each other, but then came to a single decision.

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When you perform an "autopsy", do not look for the guilty. Thus, you will take an important step towards creating such a climate in a company that does not hide the truth.

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The key, therefore, is not the availability of information, but the ability to turn existing information into facts that cannot be neglected. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is the “red flags” method.

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I borrowed the idea of ​​the “red flags” from Bruce Woolpert, who invented an effective way in his company Graniterock called underpayment. “Underpayment” gives the client the right to decide how much to pay and whether to pay at all: on the basis of satisfactoryness with the product or service. “Underpayment” is not a return shipping system. The client simply outlines the product that does not satisfy him, deducts its value from the total amount and writes out a check for the remaining amount.

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Stockdale's paradox. Admiral Jim Stockdale, he was tortured more than twenty times during his eight years in the camp, and the more he survived.

“I never lost faith,” he answered my question.
- And who did not survive?
“Oh, this is a simple question,” he answered. - Optimists.

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When you start by honestly trying to understand the situation you are in, the right decisions often become obvious.

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Charisma is a virtue and a disadvantage at the same time, because the strength of a leader’s personality can lead subordinates to hide real facts.

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"The concept of a hedgehog" or three intersecting circles. Are you a fox or a hedgehog? In the famous essay “The Hedgehog and the Fox”, Isaiah Berlin divided the world into “hedgehogs” and “foxes”, relying on an ancient Greek parable: the fox knows many different things, the hedgehog knows one thing, but very important.

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The “hedgehog concept” is a simple, crystal clear concept, presented in the form of three overlapping circles and giving answers to three questions:

1. What can you be the best in the world?
2. How does your economic model work? All the great companies used a certain key indicator, the “common divisor” - to arrive at “X”.
3. What do you especially like to do?

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If in something you are the best, you can never stay above, unless you have a deep passion for what you are doing.

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What can we potentially do better than any other company, and, equally important, what we cannot do better than any other company?

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“If Karl was a jumper in the water at the Olympics,” said one of his colleagues, “he would not have done a five-turn flip, but would have made the world's best swallow, and would have done it perfectly, again and again.”

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It is important to understand what you are experiencing a real passion.

* Kimberly Clark executive said: "Traditional paper products are good, but they don't have the charm of a diaper."
* “Zein talks about shaving systems with such fervor as if he were a Boeing engineer”

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On average, great companies took 4 years to develop their own “hedgehog concepts”.

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There must be something in which we can become the best, and we will find it!


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Creative enthusiasm begins to dry out as the most capable people leave, reacting to the growth of bureaucracy and hierarchy.

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The task of the bureaucracy is to compensate for the lack of competence and discipline. Most companies set up their bureaucracy to control a small percentage of the “wrong” people on the ship. What is more, in turn, makes the best specialists leave.

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Transformations do not begin with the fact that you are trying to instill discipline in undisciplined people, but from the fact that you hire people who have self-discipline.

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People in great companies had an exceptional sense of responsibility, sometimes reaching fanaticism.

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Discipline, diligence, perseverance, thoroughness, zeal, diligence, discretion, systematic, methodical, hard-working, demanding, consistent, focused, responsible - this is what characterized the company that achieved exceptional results.

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Nucor became a company with $ 3.5 billion. And got on the Fortune 500, with only four levels of management and only 25 people at the head office, including senior management, finance, secretaries, etc. The whole office was crowded in a rented office with a dental office.

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When Nucor had a profitable year, everyone in the company had a profitable year. When hard times happened, everyone suffered from top to bottom. But the people upstairs suffered more.

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In contrast to Nucor, Bathlem Steel built for its management a 21-storey office complex in the shape of a cross, rather than a rectangle, such an architecture allowed to accommodate more number of vice-presidents who wanted to have corner cabinets.

Nucor's average five-year profit per employee exceeded that of Bathlem Steel by almost 10 times.

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Do you have a list of things to stop doing? This list is much more important than the list of what needs to be done.

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What did Walgreens say in the midst of Internet madness to the lightning-fast growth of Drugstore.com? "- We are a company that first crawls, then goes and only then runs."

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For business schools, Nucor became a textbook example of a company that crossed out all the old rules through the use of new technologies, and the head of the company did not even mention technology among the five most important factors in the interview, which allowed them to succeed in the transition from good to great.

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It's like in the Daytona 500 race: the main factor in winning is not the car, but the pilot and his team.

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Technology is an accelerator, not a cause. Technology is the strongest stimulator of potential development.

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Do you think the most important thing to start first? Laptop computers have been released by companies that no longer exist today.

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Great companies have never talked about response measures and never defined their strategy as a response to the actions of other market participants.

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The most advanced technologies developed by companies that have achieved outstanding results, being given away to competitors free of charge, will still not be able to provide them with similar results.

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The flywheel effect - tremendous power lies in the process of successive improvements.

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When I think of companies that have achieved outstanding results, one word is constantly spinning in my head - consistency.

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When you push a giant flywheel, it takes a tremendous effort to get it moving. Then long and hard pushing in one direction, you accelerate the flywheel. Then comes the moment when the stored energy begins to work for you.

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Over the years, people got the impression that Wall-Mart is ... just a good idea that suddenly became successful. But ... this success rests on everything we have done since 1945 ... and, as with most of the "unexpected successes", it took twenty years to prepare.

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“Packard Law”: no company can increase its turnover faster than the growth of its ability to hire the right people who can ensure its development.

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There is no “right” value system. No matter what values ​​you choose, there will always be a successful company that relies on completely different principles.

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The bottom line is not what value system you have, but whether you have it, whether you know it, whether you are building your activity, relying on it, whether you keep it over time.

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It is better to make a watch than to constantly say what time it is.

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Great does not mean big. Size doesn't matter at all.

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Why become great?

Firstly, because creating something great is no more difficult than creating something good. Creating a great company is associated with less effort and even less work.

Well, the second answer ... "I think ... it's just because I like what I do"

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If you are not interested in what we are doing, find another occupation for yourself.

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People want to be at the spinning flywheel, they want to be in the winning team, they want to belong to a strong culture.

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Not everyone can be above average, but the desire to turn good into great is a process no more tedious than stagnation.

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If you have to ask, “why should we try to make it great? Isn't success enough? ”Most likely, you are not doing your own business.

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When all the elements are found and joined together, then not only your work becomes outstanding, but also your own life.

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It is impossible to live a great life if it is meaningless. And it is very difficult to find the meaning of life, having meaningless work.