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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

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

Business Discipline Purpose
Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Creativity Dies Environment
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
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
…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
The only mistakes you can learn from are the ones you survive.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Learn Mistakes Survive
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
Creative leadership impact increases in your 50’s. When I turn 50 I want to say, “Nice start!”
JAMES C. COLLINS

Creative Impact Nice
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
The secret to a successful retirement is to find your retirement sweet spot. The sweet spot is where your passions, what you do best, and what people will pay you to do overlap.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Passion Retirement Sweet
Our findings do not represent a quick fix, or the next fashion statement in a long string of management fads, or the next buzzword of the day, or a new ‘program’ to introduce. No!
JAMES C. COLLINS

Commitment Fashion Organization
Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Company Continuity Great Tension
I am completely Socratic.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Completely Emotion Socratic
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
Built to Last is about how you take a company with great results and turn it into an enduring great company of iconic stature.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Built Company Enduring Great Results
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
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
The greatest leaders build organizations that, in the end, don’t need them.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Leader Needs Organization
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
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
Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Decision Good Great Intentions
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

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

Curiosity Unleashed Wander
A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Company Great Opportunity
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.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Company Great Markets People Technology
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
Not one of the good-to-great companies focused obsessively on growth.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Business Good Great Growth

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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