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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.

James C. Collins

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

Differences Greatness Leader
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
If you have more than three priorities then you don’t have any.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Consciousness Priorities Three
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
If you have a charismatic cause you don’t need to be a charismatic leader.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Causes Leader Needs
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
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
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
I am completely Socratic.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Completely Emotion Socratic
No matter what. Wherever your mind wanders, it seems to turn up at the same Field of Dreams. It’s the vision you wake up with in the morning, and it’s the last thing you picture before you fall asleep.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Dream Morning Success
Consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Ideas Liability People Personality
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
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 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
Discipline is consistency of action.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Action Consistency Discipline
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
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
Mediocrity results first and foremost from management failure, not technological failure.
JAMES C. COLLINS

Firsts Management Mediocrity

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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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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