9 Elements in Taking a Company From Good to Great

Garrett Smith

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others don't, conducted a case study with his research team spanning 15 years and 11 companies, cross-examining company characteristics and discovering what the good-to-great companies had in common. Through their research they arrived at 9 key elements that enabled each of the 11 companies to make the leap from good to great. Each of these elements addresses operational practices, management, and personnel behavior or attitudes that are critical elements in the transition from good to great.

1. Great companies have disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action.

2. Great companies have Level 5 leaders; they have goals of building a great company in the next generation, comfortable with the idea that most people won't even know that the roots of that success trace back to their efforts.

3. Great companies get the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus before figuring out where they are going.

4. Great companies face the brutal fact, but at the same time they maintain an unfailing hope.

5. Great companies exert more effort to be on top and work harder to remain on top.

6. Great companies knows the process of being great in things they are not great in doing, creates a great company even in an industry that's not great and works with passion.

7. Great companies don't think that technology alone holds the key to success. The good to great are motivated by a deep creative urge and inner compulsion for sheer excellence for its own sake. Great technology alone won't make you a great company.

8. Great companies transforms from good to great similar to a giant flywheel being pushed in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough and beyond.

9. Great companies work towards building a great company that will last and they do not focus on short gains that will weaken the company.

Firms become great because they know what drives their economic engine, understand what they do best, and what they can be deeply passionate about. Good schools can learn to become great schools. Good government agencies can learn to be great government agencies.

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