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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

I can just let my curiosity wander unleashed.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Curiosity Unleashed Wander
Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Company Continuity Great Tension
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Building Eternal Organisation Process Stimulate
In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Communication Fundamentals Important
Companies that change best over time know first and foremost what should not change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Company Firsts Should
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
JAMES C. COLLINS

Blood Business Responsibility
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 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
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
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
The only acceptable goals are measurable,” but that’s actually an undisciplined statement. Lots of goals-beauty, quality, life change, love-are worthy but not quantifiable. But you do have to be able to tell if you’re making progress.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Able Goals Quantifiable Statements Undisciplined
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Decision Leadership Needs
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
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Faith Perseverance Reality
We are not imprisoned by circumstances, setbacks, mistakes or staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Choices Defeat Mistakes
A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Company Great Opportunity
Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Differences Greatness Leader
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
Not every financial company toppled during the 2008 crisis, and some seized the opportunity to take advantage of weaker competitors in the midst of the tumult.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Financial Midst Opportunity
You absolutely must have the discipline not to hire until you find the right people.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Discipline People Right Until
I am completely Socratic.
JAMES C. COLLINS

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

Great Organization People Without
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
Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Creativity Dies Environment
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
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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