black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Change your practices without abandoning your core values.

James C. Collins

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

Balance Change Vision
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Inevitably REquired Rigor Significant
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Ideas Liability People Personality
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Dream Morning Success
Companies that change best over time know first and foremost what should not change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Company Firsts Should
It’s what you do before you are in trouble, so that you can be strong when people most need you.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Needs People Strong
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

Business Mistake People
Discipline is consistency of action.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Action Consistency Discipline
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

Book Corporate Greatness Strategy War
The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Discipline Purpose
The challenge is not just to build a company that can endure; but to build one that is worthy of enduring.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Challenges Endure Entrepreneurs
An organization is not truly great, if it cannot be great without you.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Great Organization People Without
Whether you prevail or fail depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Failing Prevail World
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Humility Leadership Success
Everytime you think of it, the idea in your head seems to get more vivid, filled in with more detail:
JAMES C. COLLINS

Every Time Filled Seems Think
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)
JAMES C. COLLINS

Anthem Olympic Played Podium Standing

Change your practices without abandoning your core values.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Change your practices without abandoning your core values.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More James C. Collins Quotes