GOOD TO GREAT by JIM COLLINS
January was a busy month. Between kicking off the New Year and recapping our favorite reads from 2019, ADMIN’s team has a lot on their plate. This didn’t stop us from picking up a new book and diving into our first book review of 2020.
If you have read some of our previous book reviews, you know that we love business books that include research and studies. The analysis of how businesses become (and stay) successful has always been an intriguing topic for ADMIN and Good to Great by Jim Collins hit the mark. There are endless books on what it takes to achieve greatness, but Collins’s approach was refreshing and enthralling. While there are plenty of companies that are born with successful DNA, there are others that struggle to grow into their greatness. Collins and his 21-person research team decided to explore these companies and discover what truly takes a business from good to great.
Jim and his team “read and coded 6,000 articles, generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts and created 384 megabytes of computer data” over the course of five years. During this time they compared companies that went from a mediocre status in business to great. They also compared these companies to some that while also having a mediocre status in business, ended up failing. Some of the more fascinating things that separated these two categories was that the companies who ended up great were dedicated to their passion, regardless of their status. These businesses also paid attention to the things that didn’t work for them (their stop doing list) as much as they did the ones that did grant them success.
From building innovative teams to creating focused and intentional goals, Good to Great is a must read for businesses who want to thrust their business into greatness. There are some really insightful tips throughout the book and if nothing else, it’s a really interesting read!
We want to know: what are you reading this month? Share your top books in the comments below!