2024 Full Shelf Challenge V.2: 03

Title:  Good to Great

Author:  Jim Collins

Info: Text copyright 2001.  Audio copyright 2012:  Harper Collins

Rating (on a scale of 1-4 stars):  ✮

Where Acquired: Library check out.

Category (ies) - Recommended reads:  Years ago, Dave Ramsey mentioned this book as part of his recommended reading list.  Recently, I attended a lecture on leadership and the speaker mentioned this book. I previously owned a thrifted hardcover edition of the book, but it was culled to the donate pile when I was preparing to move to Colorado.  I found the audio version of the book at the library.    Bingo card:  "About Productivity"

Synopsis:Among the list of Fortune 500 companies are many "good" companies, but few that qualify as "great."  Jim Collins and his team of researchers attempt to answer the question of what actions and attitudes take a good company to a great one.  Can these actions and attitudes be replicated?  Is being "good" good enough and is being "great" even a reasonable goal?

The Positive:

• The information was very well researched and the author gave ample credit to the research team who assisted in the writing of the book.  He even went so far as to list them by name. 
  

The Negative: 

• The narration was performed by the author.  As I've stated before (and will probably state again...several times), some authors simply should not read their own books for audio distribution.  This was the case with this book.  Collins reads the book as if he's angry that the reader doesn't already know the concepts presented.  In other words, he's not reading to the listener, he's reading at the listener.
  
• Like many books of this nature, the author makes sweeping promises that he can't keep of how his methods will work for anyone in a leadership position.  He goes so far as to mention educators and others in the social sector. (nonprofit organizations, churches, etc.) and potential "level five" leaders. Unfortunately, in these situations the methods simply are not universal.  When good employees and volunteers are in such low supply (much less great ones), the social sector has to work with who they have rather than who is ideal.  Collins tries to sidestep this shortsighted assumption in his question and answer section at the end of the book.  On this particular question, he refers the reader to his website.  The only article I could find was this one:  www.jimcolins.com/books/g2g-ss.html.  It this piece Collins asserts that business thinking is not the answer, but criticizes the social sector for not thinking like a  business.  Do what now?
  
• Too much cliche' speak.  If he said "people are not what is most important; the right people are what is most important," or "getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus" once, he said it ten times (maybe more).  While I understand that in hiring situations it is important to hire the right people for the right job, this "bus" concept does not apply to the social sector.  Each time I heard this phrase, I pictured a group of children waiting for the school bus.  The driver pulls up and happily welcomes the "right" or "cool" kids on the bus while denying access to the "wrong" or "uncool" child.  Yuck!  Also, the author seems to forget that in his research, some of the great companies hired people without knowing in what position they would be placed.  Seems like they found the people and figured out the "bus" later.  🤔
  
• I find it hard to reconcile Collins' repeated statement that results aren't the main factor in what makes a good company great with the research presented that was based on the very results he claims aren't important.
  

Conclusion/Takeaway:

This was nine hours of my life I won't get back and only frustrates my search for leadership materials for "regular" people even more.  Look, I freely admit that I'm not a CEO or business leader.  It's taken me many years to accept the notion that I am any kind of leader.  With that being said, it is possible that Collins' concepts were too far over my head to be remotely applicable, or I could have simply misunderstood.  Perhaps I shouldn't have attempted this read.  Perhaps I should have ceased reading when the material became too convoluted and not finished the tome out of pure spite.  Maybe I'm the wrong person who tried to get on the wrong bus.