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Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.

James C. Collins

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

Business Good Great Growth
Great companies foster a productive tension between continuity and change.
JAMES C. COLLINS

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

Leader Needs Organization
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
By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Average Definitions Good Great
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
Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Differences Greatness Leader
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
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
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 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

Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.

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Throw leaders into an extreme environment, and it will separate the stark differences between greatness and mediocrity.

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Popular Authors

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