Business Books by James Collins Best Selling Author of Good to Great

Business Books by James Collins Best Selling Author of Good to Great

Books in list (6)


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

The Challenge: Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study: For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great? The Standards: Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck. The Comparisons: The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good? Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't. The Findings: The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include: Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness. The Hedgehog Concept: (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence. A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap. “Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.” Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
Author(s): Jim Collins
ISBN 13: 9780066620992
Pages: 320
This book is in (13) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer - A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

Building upon the concepts introduced in Good to Great, Jim Collins answers the most commonly asked questions raised by his readers in the social sectors. Using information gathered from interviews with over 100 social sector leaders, Jim Collins shows that his "Level 5 Leader" and other good-to-great principles can help social sector organizations make the leap to greatness.

Author(s): Jim Collins
ISBN 13: 9780977326402
Pages: 42
This book is in (2) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck--Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns withanother groundbreaking work, this time to ask: why do some companies thrive inuncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research,buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins andhis colleague Morten Hansen enumerate the principles for building a truly greatenterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times. This book isclassic Collins: contrarian, data-driven and uplifting.
Author(s): Jim Collins
ISBN 13: 9780062120991
Pages: 320
This book is in (3) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?" Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the 21st century and beyond.
Author(s): Jim Collins
ISBN 13: 9780060516406
Pages: 368
This book is in (4) other book lists, learn more.

Title: How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In

Decline can be avoided.

Decline can be detected.

Decline can be reversed.

Amidst the desolate landscape of fallen great companies, Jim Collins began to wonder: How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse course?

In How the Mighty Fall, Collins confronts these questions, offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. Collins' research project—more than four years in duration—uncovered five step-wise stages of decline:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

By understanding these stages of decline, leaders can substantially reduce their chances of falling all the way to the bottom.

Great companies can stumble, badly, and recover.

Every institution, no matter how great, is vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do. But, as Collins' research emphasizes, some companies do indeed recover—in some cases, coming back even stronger—even after having crashed into the depths of Stage 4.

Decline, it turns out, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely within our own hands. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our history, or even our staggering defeats along the way. As long as we never get entirely knocked out of the game, hope always remains. The mighty can fall, but they can often rise again.

Author(s): Jim Collins
ISBN 13: 9780977326419
Pages: 240
This book is in (2) other book lists, learn more.

Title: Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company

If you head a small to mid-sized enterprise or one within a larger firm, here is a remarkable book that can help you build an extraordinary organization capable of long-term health and success. Beyond Entrepreneurship shows how to turn your business into an entity that "sustains high performance, rises to the status of role model, and remains great for generations," in the words of the authors. Step by step, Collins and Lazier reveal how to lay a foundation for greatness, while a company is still small and adaptable enough to fully embody the values of its leaders. Drawing on their many years of first-hand experience working in private industry and serving as business consultants, Collins and Lazier cover all the essential aspects of attaining corporate greatness--supported by dozens of real-life examples of firms as diverse as Mrs. Fields Cookies, Continental Cablevision, and Giro Sport Design. In Beyond Entrepreneurship they provide tested ideas and methods for developing the most effective leadership style for your personality characteristics... and developing the 7 key elements of a leadership style to inspire real loyalty and dedication. Then, they move on to an often overlooked function of leadership: catalyzing a vision. Every great company has at its core a compelling vision. You'll discover a clear and useful framework for setting corporate vision--a framework that removes the confusion about this important and elusive topic, yet retains the "spark" that's an essential quality of a motivating and effective overall vision. Collins and Lazier also discuss and illustrate the four key principles of setting business strategy, and explain how to resolve critical strategic issues--like whether to lead a market or follow--faced by every small to mid-sized firm. The authors present a set of concepts and practical suggestions for stimulating creativity and keeping your company innovative as it evolves. Finally, they spell out how to translate vision and strategy

This inspiring work provides entrepreneurs with building blocks to help their companies sustain high performance, play a leadership role in their industries, and remain great for generations. Includes plenty of real-world examples drawn from Nike, L.L. Bean, Wal-Mart, Federal Express, and other success stories.

Author(s): James Collins
ISBN 13: 9780133815269
Pages: 256
This book is in (2) other book lists, learn more.

 


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