James C. Collins Quotes

#1. Circles and getting rid of everything else.

James C. Collins

#2. True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#4. Enduring great companies don't exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed, 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.

James C. Collins

#5. 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.

James C. Collins

#6. Good is the enemy of great. And

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#8. In classic hedgehog style, Walgreens took this simple concept and implemented it with fanatical consistency.

James C. Collins

#9. Stop doing" lists are more important than"to do" lists.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#11. 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.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#13. 10Xers distinguish themselves by an ability to recognize defining moments that call for disrupting their plans, changing the focus of their intensity, and/or rearranging their agenda, because of opportunity or peril, or both.

James C. Collins

#14. 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.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#16. Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. In

James C. Collins

#17. 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.

James C. Collins

#18. 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.

James C. Collins

#19. Managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#21. It's not how you compensate your executives, it's which executives you have to compensate in the first place. If

James C. Collins

#22. 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.

James C. Collins

#23. 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.

James C. Collins

#24. Change your practices without abandoning your core values.

James C. Collins

#25. You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.

James C. Collins

#26. Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#28. The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#30. The only truly reliable source of stability is a strong inner core and the willingness to change and adapt everything except that core.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#32. What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life.

James C. Collins

#33. 1. Build a culture around the idea of freedom and responsibility, within a framework.

James C. Collins

#34. accomplish the organization's mission.

James C. Collins

#35. Peter Drucker once observed that the drive for mergers and acquisitions comes less from sound reasoning and more from the fact that doing deals is a much more exciting way to spend your day than doing actual work.35

James C. Collins

#36. We find out who they are by asking them why they made decisions in their life. The answers to these questions give us insight into their core values.33

James C. Collins

#37. The difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

James C. Collins

#38. if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great.

James C. Collins

#39. Discipline should amplify creativity rather than stifle it.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#41. We did not begin this project with a theory to test or prove. We sought to build a theory from the ground up, derived directly from the evidence.

James C. Collins

#42. I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great.

James C. Collins

#43. 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.

James C. Collins

#44. Creative leadership impact increases in your 50's. When I turn 50 I want to say, "Nice start!"

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#46. Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.

James C. Collins

#47. We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it.

James C. Collins

#48. Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious-but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

James C. Collins

#49. How many companies have you encountered that articulate a clear ideology at the start of the company, yet cannot articulate a clear idea of what products to make?

James C. Collins

#50. 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.

James C. Collins

#51. That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#53. What can we do better than any other company in the world, that fits our economic denominator and that we have passion for?

James C. Collins

#54. Compared to high-profile leaders with big personalities who make headlines and become celebrities, the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. Self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy - these leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. They

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#56. was so straightforward and obvious that it sounds almost ridiculous to talk about it.

James C. Collins

#57. Good is the enemy of great. That's why so few things become great.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#60. Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment.

James C. Collins

#61. Far more difficult than implementing change is figuring out what works, understanding why it works, grasping when to change, and knowing when not to.

James C. Collins

#62. 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.

James C. Collins

#63. A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.

James C. Collins

#64. The critical question is not whether you'll have luck, but what you do with the luck that you get.

James C. Collins

#65. Not every financial company toppled during the 2008 crisis, and some seized the opportunity to take advantage of weaker competitors in the midst of the tumult.

James C. Collins

#66. Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was ... just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But ... it was an outgrowth of everything we'd been doing since [1945] ... And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#68. What is the purpose of budgeting? Most

James C. Collins

#69. The world is changing, and will continue to do so. But that does not mean we should stop the search for timeless principles.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#75. I can just let my curiosity wander unleashed.

James C. Collins

#76. If your company disappeared, would it leave a gaping hole that could not easily be filled by any other enterprise on the planet?

James C. Collins

#77. Technology and technology-driven change has virtually nothing to do with igniting a transformation from good to great

James C. Collins

#78. Don't be interesting - be interested.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#80. "Growth!" is not a Hedgehog Concept. Rather, if you have the right Hedgehog Concept and make decisions relentlessly consistent with it, you will create such momentum that your main problem will not be how to grow, but how not to grow too fast.

James C. Collins

#81. How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?

James C. Collins

#82. 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.

James C. Collins

#83. 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.

James C. Collins

#84. 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.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#86. Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.

James C. Collins

#87. But what I find so striking is their incredible simplicity.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#90. Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.

James C. Collins

#91. Charisma can be as much a liability as an asset, as the strength of your leadership personality can deter people from bringing you the brutal facts.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#93. My God, these guys don't even know what the return-on-investment will be on this thing.

James C. Collins

#94. In no case do we have a company that just happened to be sitting on the nose cone of a rocket when it took off.

James C. Collins

#95. The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

James C. Collins

#96. First figure out your partners, then figure out what ideas to pursue. The most important thing isn't the market you target, the product you develop or the financing, but the founding team.

James C. Collins

#97. Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States

James C. Collins

#98. doing what you are good at will only make you good;

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#100. Hedgehog Concept - disciplined action, following from disciplined people who exercise disciplined thought.

James C. Collins