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A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.

James C. Collins

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

Great Organization People Without
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 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
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
The only mistakes you can learn from are the ones you survive.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Learn Mistakes Survive
…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
Not one of the good-to-great companies focused obsessively on growth.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Good Great Growth
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
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

Blood Oxygen Water
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
Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Done Involved Involves Possibly Something
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
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

Keys Order People Point Second
Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Company Continuity Great Tension
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

Keys Reason Why Vision
The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Discipline Purpose

A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.

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A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.

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