The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.
JAMES C. COLLINSIt occurs to me,Jim,that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don’t you invest more time being interested?” Collin’s advice from John Gardner that he took to heart.
More James C. Collins Quotes
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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.
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Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.
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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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The only way to make any company visionary is through a long-term commitment to an eternal process of building the organization to preserve the core and stimulate progress.
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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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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.
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Genius of AND. Embrace both extremes on a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing a OR B, figure out how to have A AND B-purpose AND profit, continuity AND change, freedom AND responsibility, etc.
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Whether you prevail or fail depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.
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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.
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In a truly great company profits and cash flow become like blood and water to a healthy body: They are absolutely essential for life but they are not the very point of life
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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.
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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.
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By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.
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A visionary company doesn’t simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable.
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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