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If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I’d put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn.

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
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

Business Keys Passion
In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Communication Fundamentals Important
Yet at the same time they display a remarkable humility about themselves, ascribing much of their own success to luck, discipline and preparation rather than personal genius.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Ascribing Guest Personal Preparations Success Yet
…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

Believe Business Greatness
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
Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Firsts Management Mediocrity
The inner experience of fallure is totally different than failure. Going to fallure means 100% commitment – you leave nothing in reserve, no mental or physical resource untapped, you never give yourself a psychological out.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Letting Go Mean Pain
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

Ideas Important Product Team
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

Giving Life Motivational
I’ve never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Decision Leadership Organization
Discipline is consistency of action.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Action Consistency Discipline
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

Opportunity People Thinking
An organization is not truly great, if it cannot be great without you.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Great Organization People Without
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

Achieve People Way
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

Business Fall Greatness

If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I’d put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn.

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If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I’d put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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