FEATURED ARTICLE
Good to Great
Fast Company
Start with 1,435 good companies. Examine their performance over 40 years. Find the 11 companies that became great. Now, here's how you can do it, too. Lessons on eggs, flywheels, hedgehogs, buses, and other concepts that can help you transform your company.
SOCIAL SECTORS
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10 Lessons I Learned from Peter DruckerBy Jim Collins
Foreword to the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Effective Executive.
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The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Peopleby Stephen R. Covey
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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7 Measures of Successby ASAE
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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| READ | The 10 Greatest CEOs of All TimeFORTUNE
What these extraordinary leaders can teach today's troubled executives.
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| READ | 20 Mile March – Building Confidence in K12 EducationExcerpt from Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
Accomplishing a 20 Mile March, consistently, in good times and bad, builds confidence in K12 education and beyond.
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Aligning Action and ValuesThe Forum
Executives spend too much time wordsmithing vision statements, mission statements, values statements, purpose statements, and aspiration statements—and nowhere nearly enough time trying to align their organizations with the values and visions already in place.
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And the Walls Came Tumbling DownLeading Beyond the Walls, a book edited and produced by the Peter F. Drucker Foundation The most productive relationships are partnerships rooted in a freedom of choice vested in both parties to participate only in that which is mutually beneficial and uplifting.
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The Art of Competitionby Mark Allen
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Best Beats FirstInc.
Of all the new economy's supposed "rules," the notion that nothing is as important as being first to reach scale may be the most widely accepted. It's also wrong.
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Best New Year's Resolution? A "Stop Doing" ListUSA Today
The start of the new year is a perfect time to start a "stop doing" list and make this the cornerstone of your New Year's resolutions, be it for your company, your family, or yourself.
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BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious GoalExcerpt from Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras Highly Visionary companies use BHAGs as a particularly powerful mechanism to stimulate progress.
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Bigger, Better, FasterFast Company Lessons from Sam Walton and the culture he built.
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Book ValueInc.
To judge by the bestseller lists, a lot of people think you can become a leader by reading books. You can—but they are not the books you'd expect.
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Building Companies to LastInc. Special Issue—The State of Small Business In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever.
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Built to FlipFast Company A battle is underway for the new economy. Which side are you on?
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Can You Grow into Level 5 Leadership?Excerpt from Good to Great
Level 5 leaders can be developed under the right circumstances—self-reflection, conscious personal development, a mentor, a great teacher, loving parents, a significant life experience, a Level 5 boss, or any number of other factors. Excerpted from Good to Great.
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Change Is Good—But First, Know What Should Never ChangeFORTUNE
Reengineering and other prevailing management fads that urge dramatic change and fundamental transformation on all fronts are not only wrong, they are dangerous.
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The ClassicsInc. Jim offers a short guide to the best business and management books ever written.
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Collaborationby Morten T. Hansen
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Companies Need Not Hire Outside CEOs to Stimulate Fundamental ChangeDirectorship (coauthored with Jerry Porras) A visionary company can tick along for centuries, pursuing its purpose and expressing its core values long beyond the tenure of any individual leader.
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Corporations Will Shape Our Future ValuesUSA Today Visionary business leaders of the 20th century used their companies to shape society and its values. They will become the norm, rather than the exception, in the 21st.
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The Daily Druckerby Peter F. Drucker
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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The Death of the Charismatic Leader (and the Birth of an Architect)Inc.
This article is part of Inc.'s cover story "What Comes Next?" Jim Collins points out that an enduring great company has to be built not to depend on an individual leader, because individuals die or retire or move on.
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Dream Bigby Christiane Correa
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Drucker & Meby Bob Buford
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Expensive "Name" CEOs Not Necessarily Best LeadersUSA Today Imagine the absurdity of paying a CEO $100 million despite mediocre performance. Has executive compensation reached a new level of insanity?
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Fast Company's Greatest HitsEdited by Mark N. Vamos and David Lidsky
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Fear NotInc.
"Change or die," say many of the experts. "The reason to get better is that bad things will happen to you if you don't." Is that kind of fear a good motivator? Not for long.
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Few Hot Internet Companies Are Built to LastUSA Today
Only a small fraction of today's Internet companies will become powerful pistons in the economic engine of society.
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First Who – Get the Right People on the BusExcerpt from Good to Great
The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.
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The Flywheel EffectExcerpt from Good to Great
Good to Great comes about by a cumulative process—step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel—that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.
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Forget Strategy, Build Mechanisms InsteadInc.
This article is part of Inc.'s cover story "What Comes Next?" Jim writes that to put your core purpose to work, you need mechanisms—the practices that bring what you stand for to life and stimulate change.
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Good to GreatFast Company
Start with 1,435 good companies. Examine their performance over 40 years. Find the 11 companies that became great. Now, here's how you can do it, too. Lessons on eggs, flywheels, hedgehogs, buses, and other concepts that can help you transform your company.
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Halftimeby Bob Buford
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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The Hedgehog Concept in the Business SectorsExcerpt from Good to Great
A Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of three circles: 1. What you can be the best in the world at, 2. What drives your economic engine, and 3. What you are deeply passionate about.
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Hedgehog Concept in the Social SectorsExcerpt from Good to Great and the Social Sectors
Applying the Hedgehog Concept to the social sectors by rethinking the third circle--from an economic engine to a resource engine.
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Hesselbein on Leadershipby Frances Hesselbein
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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The Highest Goalby Michael Ray
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Hitting the WallEdited by Michael Useem, Jerry Useem, and Paul Asel (Chapter 1 and Epilogue from the book Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business Leaders Reached Their Summits)
Jim has been a rock climber for most of his life. Here he shares some of his lessons for life and business that he learned in the vertical classroom, such as climb to fallure, not failure; separate probability from consequence; and be an expert beginner.
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How Great Companies Tame TechnologyNewsweek
In 1997, Jim conducted a research interview with Ken Iverson, the CEO who led Nucor from obscurity into becoming the most profitable steel company in America.
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How the Mighty FallBusinessweek
Why do some companies fall from greatness? By understanding the Five Stages of Decline and avoiding them, leaders can better sustain—or regain—great results.
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How to Manage Through ChaosFORTUNE (coauthored with Morten T. Hansen)
Change is accelerating, uncertainty is permanent, and chaos is common. Yet some leaders and entrepreneurs navigate these conditions exceptionally well. They don't merely react; they create. They don't merely survive; they prevail. They don't merely succeed; they thrive.
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The HP Wayby David Packard
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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It's not What You Make, it's What You Stand ForInc.
This article is part of Inc.'s cover story "What Comes Next?" Jim Collins says that concentrating on products—or services, if that is what you sell—is a trap.
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Leadership Lessons from West PointEdited by Major Doug Crandall
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Leadership ReckoningBy Thomas Kolditz, Ph.D., Libby Gill, and Ryan P. Brown, Ph.D.
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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The Learning ExecutiveInc.
Becoming a learning person involves responding to every situation with learning in mind.
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Level 5 Leadership and 10X Entrepreneurial SuccessExcerpt from Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen
10Xers share Level 5 leaders' most important trait: they're incredibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the company, for the work, not themselves.
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Looking Out for Number OneInc.
Jim writes about the value of creating a Personal Board of Directors.
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Managementby Peter F. Drucker
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Manager's Journal: High Returns amid Low ExpectationsThe Wall Street Journal
During the late 1990s, executives complained about out-of-whack expectations created by an irrational stock market. Now many of those same people complain about the pressures created by recession, war, terrorism, and a struggling market.
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The Maverick and His Machineby Kevin Maney
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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The Misguided Mix-up of Celebrity and LeadershipConference Board Annual Report, Annual Feature Essay
Virtually everything our modern culture believes about the type of leadership required to transform our institutions is wrong. It is also dangerous.
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The Most Creative Product EverInc.
The next wave of enduring great companies will be built not by technical or product visionaries, but by social visionaries—those who see their company and how it operates as their ultimate creation, and who invent entirely new ways of organizing human effort and creativity.
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My Life in Leadershipby Frances Hesselbein
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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Old Economy Companies Learn New Economy TricksUSA Today
The belief that "new economy" companies will annihilate all "old economy" companies has been replaced with a more realistic view.
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Pulling the PlugInc.
Want to make room for all those new projects? Stop one thing you are doing right now.
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The Secret Life of the CEO: Is the Economy Just Built to Flip?Fast Company
Here's the truth: The problem is not the market's rise or fall. The problem is people who react to events rather than seek to create something great.
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The Secret of Enduring GreatnessFORTUNE
That most great institutions fall—and we cannot deny this fact—does not
mean yours has to be one of them.
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Shareflipping Cheats Shareholders of Real ValueUSA Today
Responsibility to shareholders is rapidly becoming an irrelevant concept in our country. Increasingly, corporate ownership lies not in the hands of shareholders, but in the hands of an entirely different species: shareflippers.
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The Silicon Valley Paradigm and Why It WonThe Red Herring
Jim compares two Silicon Valley business models.
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Sometimes a Great NotionInc.
A surprising number of companies we consider great today did not start out with a compelling idea for a product or service.
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The Timeless Physics of Great CompaniesBusinessweek
The Internet is a big deal, but electricity was bigger. Building a great company requires adherence to principles predating both.
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Trade Offby Kevin Maney
Book foreword by Jim Collins.
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The Wizard, King, and Hobbit of BusinessFast Company
The story of a father who builds an empire, a reluctant son who battles against his father before inheriting the empire and taking it to greatness, and a stranger who shows up in the nick of time to save all that the father and son have built.
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