James C. Collins Quotations

You must ask, "What do we mean by great results?" Your goals don't have to be quantifiable, but they do have to be describable. Some leaders try to insist, "The only acceptable goals are measurable," but that's actually an undisciplined statement. Lots of goals-beauty, quality, life change, love-are worthy but not quantifiable. But you do have to be able to tell if you're making progress.

The greatest leaders build organizations that, in the end, don't need them.

In determing "the right people," the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.

A dream is a feeling that sticks - and propels.

Start a 'Stop Doing' list. I'll leave it as an existential dilemma on whether to put that task on your To Do list

Our findings do not represent a quick fix, or the next fashion statement in a long string of management fads, or the next buzzword of the day, or a new 'program' to introduce. No! The only way to make any company visionary is through a long-term commitment to an eternal process of building the organization to preserve the core and stimulate progress.

The only way to deliver to the people who are achieving is to not burden them with the people who are not achieving.

You can't manufacture passion or "motivate" people to feel passionate. You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passions of those around you.

Recruit entrepreneurial leaders and give them freedom to determine the best path to achieving their objectives. On the other hand, individuals must commit fully to the system you use and be held rigorously accountable for their objectives. You give them freedom, but freedom within a framework.

A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.

Don't take care of your career. Take care of your people. They will take care of your career.

You absolutely must have the discipline not to hire until you find the right people.

Don't be interesting - be interested.

The people who don't have a great life are the ones who settle for a good one.

Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment.

The most effective leaders of companies in transition are the quiet, unassuming people whose inner wiring is such that the worst circumstances bring out their best. They're unflappable, they're ready to die if they have to. But you can trust that, when bad things are happening, they will become clearheaded and focused.

I am completely Socratic.

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.

In an ironic twist, I now see Good to Great not as a sequel to Built to Last, but more of a prequel. Good to Great is about how to turn a good organization into one that produces sustained great results. Built to Last is about how you take a company with great results and turn it into an enduring great company of iconic stature.

If I'm going really, really fast, I can do a page of finished text a day, on average.

People are not your most important asset....the right people are.

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconstancy. The signature of greatness is a disciplined and consistent focus on the right things.

Leaders who led their organizations quietly and humbly, were much more effective than flashy, charismatic high profile leaders.

The difference between a good leader and a great leader is humility.

I can just let my curiosity wander unleashed.

The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is inconsistency.

Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.

We must reject the idea... Well-intentioned, but dead wrong... That the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become "more like a business." Most businesses... Like most of anything else in life... Fall somewhere between mediocre and good.

If we allow the celebrity rock-star model of leadership to triumph, we will see the decline of corporations and institutions of all types. The twentieth century was a century of greatness, but we face the very real prospect that the next century will see very few enduring great institutions.

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.

Faith in the endgame helps you live through the months or years of buildup.

Consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you.

It occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don't you invest more time being interested?" Collin's advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.

For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.

Good is the enemy of great.

Good is the enemy of great.. The vast majority of good companies remain just that - good, but not great.

It took Einstein ten years of groping through the fog to get the theory of special relativity, and he was a bright guy.

Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.

Whether you prevail or fail depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.

The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company's core values), to make the company great. Yet at the same time they display a remarkable humility about themselves, ascribing much of their own success to luck, discipline and preparation rather than personal genius.

In a truly great company profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life but they are not the very point of life

If you have more than three priorities then you don't have any.

Most people will look back and realize they did not have a great life because it's just so easy to settle for a good life.

Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.

The start of the New Year is a perfect time to start a stop doing list and to make this the cornerstone of your New Year resolutions, be it for your company, your family or yourself. It also is a perfect time to clarify your three circles, mirroring at a personal level the three questions... 1) What are you deeply passionate about? 2) What are you are genetically encoded for - what activities do you feel just "made to do"? 3) What makes economic sense - what can you make a living at?

A visionary company doesn't simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable.

Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.

Some managers are uncomfotable with expressing emotion about their dreams, but it's the passion and emotion that will attract and motivate others.

You need self-control in an out-of-control world.

To have a Welch-caliber C.E.O. is impressive.To have a century of Welch-Caliber C.E.O.'s all grown from the inside - well, that is one key reason why G.E. is a visionary company.

How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?

I see the Baldrige process as a powerful set of mechanisms for disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action to create great organizations that produce exceptional results.

People need BHAGs - big hairy audacious goals.

Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.

Greatest danger is not failure, but be successful and not know why.

All companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but few companies have a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you don't need hierarchy. When you have disciplined thought, you don't need bureaucracy. When you have disciplined action, you don' t need excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.

Discipline is consistency of action.

I am not failing - I am growing! Do you have the ability to reframe failure as growth in order to achieve your goals?

Discipline should amplify creativity rather than stifle it.

If you have a charismatic cause you don't need to be a charismatic leader.

How can you succeed by helping others succeed? We succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed.

We learned that a former prisoner of war had more to teach us about what it takes to find a path to greatness than most books on corporate strategy.

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.

Focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness.

It's more important than ever to define yourself in terms of what you stand for rather than what you make, because what you make is going to become outmoded faster than it has at any time in the past. ...hang on to the idea of who you are as a company, and focus not on what you do, but on what you could do. By being really clear about what you stand for and why you exist, you can see what you could do with a much more open mind. You enhance your ability to adapt to change.

Good is the enemy of great. And that's one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great.

Companies that change best over time know first and foremost what should not change.

I've never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity. Significant decisions carry risks and inevitably some will oppose it. In these settings, the great legislative leader must be artful in handling uncomfortable decisions, and this requires rigor.

The essence of profound insight is simplicity.

Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity...are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.

There is a sense of exhilaration that comes from facing head-on the hard truths and saying, "We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail."

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.

Resilency, not perfection, is the signature of greatness.

Genuine confidence is what launches you out of bed in the morning, and through your day with a spring in your step.

The only mistakes you can learn from are the ones you survive.

The x factor of a great leader is humility combined with will.

Those fortunate enough to find or create a practical intersection of the three circles have the basis for a great work life.

Good-to-great companies set their goals and strategies based on understanding; comparison companies set their goals and strategies based on bravado.

Be rigorous about your HR decisions. There is a difference between rigorous and ruthless.

Profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life.

Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment.

Just because a company falls doesn't invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.

Get the right people on the bus and in the right seat.

Genius of AND. Embrace both extremes on a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing a OR B, figure out how to have A AND B-purpose AND profit, continuity AND change, freedom AND responsibility, etc.

The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure; but to build one that is worthy of enduring.

The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. The best people don't need to be managed. Guided, taught, led-yes. But not tightly managed.

Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.

Not one of the good-to-great companies focused obsessively on growth.

No matter what. Wherever your mind wanders, it seems to turn up at the same Field of Dreams. It's the vision you wake up with in the morning, and it's the last thing you picture before you fall asleep. Everytime you think of it, the idea in your head seems to get more vivid, filled in with more detail: You not only want to win a gold medal at the Olympics, you not only can see yourself standing there on the podium, but you can also feel the goose bumps as your national anthem is played; the tears are in your eyes. (That's how real a dream can be and should be)

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.

We are not imprisoned by circumstances, setbacks, mistakes or staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.

...the question, Why try for greatness? would seem almost tautological. If you're doing something you care that much about, and you believe in its purpose deeply enough, then it is impossible to imagine not trying to make it great. It's just a given.

Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great.

The only way to remain great is to keep on applying the fundamental principles that made you great.

Indeed, the real question is not, "Why greatness?" but "What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?" if you have to ask the question, "Why should we try to make it great? Isn't success enough?" then you're probably int he wrong line of work.

Get keep right people.

Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.