James C Collins Quotes

#1. accomplish the organization's mission.

James C. Collins

#2. Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#4. I ... had no need for cheering dreams," he wrote. "Facts are better than dreams.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#7. 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

#8. Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence - more plow horse than show horse.

James C. Collins

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. A dream is a feeling that sticks - and propels.

James C. Collins

#12. 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

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

James C. Collins

#14. 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

#15. You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts. The good-to-great companies operated in accordance with this principle, and the comparison companies generally did not.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#19. The good-to-great leaders never wanted to become larger-than-life heroes. They never aspired to be put on a pedestal or become unreachable icons. They were seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#21. 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.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#23. 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

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

James C. Collins

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. If you have the right people, they will be self-motivated.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#29. first who... then what" start-up.

James C. Collins

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. An organization is not truly great, if it cannot be great without you.

James C. Collins

#33. Reichardt kept people relentlessly focused on the simple hedgehog idea,

James C. Collins

#34. 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

#35. 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.

James C. Collins

#36. 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

#37. The drive for progress doesn't wait for the external world to say "It's time to change."

James C. Collins

#38. Twenty percent of our success is the new technology that we embrace ... [but] eighty percent of our success is in the culture of our company."24 Indeed,

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#40. 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.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

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

James C. Collins

#45. 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

#46. The Marine Corps recruits people who share the corps' values, then provides them with the training required to

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#48. Comfort is not the objective in a visionary company. Indeed, visionary companies install powerful mechanisms to create /dis/comfort
to obliterate complacency
and thereby stimulate change and improvement /before/ the external world demands it.

James C. Collins

#49. People need BHAGs - big hairy audacious goals.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#53. Technology is important - you can't remain a laggard and hope to be great. But technology by itself is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline.

James C. Collins

#54. 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

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

James C. Collins

#56. 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

#57. Greatness is an inherently dynamic process, not an end point. The moment you think of yourself as great, your slide toward mediocrity will have already begun.

James C. Collins

#58. Lasting transformations from good to great follow a general pattern of buildup followed by breakthrough.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#60. 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.

James C. Collins

#61. 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

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

James C. Collins

#63. 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

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

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#66. We hire five, work them like ten, and pay them like eight."31

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#68. The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.

James C. Collins

#69. Good is the enemy of great. And

James C. Collins

#70. 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

#71. 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

#72. Discipline is consistency of action.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#74. 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 engaged in the wrong line of work.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#76. Indeed, if there is any one "secret" to an enduring great company, it is the ability to manage continuity and change - a discipline that must be consciously practiced, even by the most visionary of companies.

James C. Collins

#77. 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."

James C. Collins

#78. 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

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

James C. Collins

#80. Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with going from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#82. 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

#83. A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.

James C. Collins

#84. 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

#85. Not all time in life is equal. How many opportunities do you get to talk about what your life is going to add up to with people thinking about the same question?

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#87. The Mach3 - leaving hundreds of millions of people to a more painful daily battle with stubble.19

James C. Collins

#88. 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.

James C. Collins

#89. Circles and getting rid of everything else.

James C. Collins

#90. Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.

James C. Collins

#91. By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.

James C. Collins

#92. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

James C. Collins

#93. When you turn over rocks and look at all the squiggly things underneath, you can either put the rock down, or you can say, 'My job is to turn over rocks and look at the squiggly things,' even if what you see can scare the hell out of you."25

James C. Collins

#94. Resilency, not perfection, is the signature of greatness.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#96. Sustained great results depend upon building a culture full of self-disciplined people who take disciplined action, fanatically consistent with the three circles.

James C. Collins

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

James C. Collins

#98. 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

#99. 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

#100. 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.

James C. Collins