James C. "Jim" Collins III (born 1958) is an American business consultant, author, and lecturer on the subject of company sustainability and growth.
It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as "passion" as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept.
Get keep right people.
Dreams make you click, juice you, turn you on, excite the living daylights out of you. You cannot wait to get out of bed to continue pursuing your dream. The kind of dream I'm talking about gives meaning to your life. it is the ultimate motivator.
Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.
Managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.
Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.
How can you succeed by helping others succeed? We succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed.
It is more important to know who you are than where you are going, for where you are going will change as the world around you changes.
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats. . .
For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect - people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us - then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.
Focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.
The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
The main point is first get the right people on the bus (and wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor in people decisions in order to take a company from Good to Great.
Good is the enemy of great. And that's one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.
Discipline should amplify creativity rather than stifle it.
The kind of commitment I find among the best performers across virtually every field is a single-minded passion for what they do, an unwavering desire for excellence in the way they think and the way they work. Genuine confidence is what launches you out of bed in the morning, and through your day with a spring in your step.
The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure; but to build one that is worthy of enduring.
If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I'd put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn. And the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.
You need self-control in an out-of-control world.
The secret to a successful retirement is to find your retirement sweet spot. The sweet spot is where your passions, what you do best, and what people will pay you to do overlap.