Creative leadership impact increases in your 50’s. When I turn 50 I want to say, “Nice start!”
JAMES C. COLLINSThe purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.
More James C. Collins Quotes
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A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between preserving a tightly held core ideology and stimulating vigorous change and movement; it does both to an extreme.
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I am completely Socratic.
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Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.
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The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure; but to build one that is worthy of enduring.
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Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.
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I’ve never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity.
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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.
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Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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We are not imprisoned by circumstances, setbacks, mistakes or staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.
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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.
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Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.
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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.
JAMES C. COLLINS






