Inspiring Quotes to Propel You from Good to Great

"Great vision without great people is irrelevant."

- James C. Collins

"The best students are those who never quite believe their professors."

- James C. Collins

"You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit."

- James C. Collins

"Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company."

- James C. Collins

"Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless."

- James C. Collins

"There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus."

- James C. Collins

"The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake."

- James C. Collins

"The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies had a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great. There is an important"

- James C. Collins

"Perhaps your quest to be part of building something great will not fall in your business life. But find it somewhere. If not in corporate life, then perhaps in making your church great. If not there, then perhaps a nonprofit, or a community organization, or a class you teach. Get involved in something that you care so much about that you want to make it the greatest it can possibly be, not because of what you will get, but just because it can be done."

- Jim Collins

"If you begin with 'who,' rather than 'what,' you can more easily adapt to a changing world."

- James C. Collins

"For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work."

- James C. Collins

"Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions."

- James C. Collins

"You get the best people, you build them into the best managers in the industry, and you accept the fact that some of them will be recruited to become CEOs of other companies."

- James C. Collins

"First who, rather than what, you can more easily adapt to a changing world."

- James C. Collins

"To be rigorous means consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management."

- James C. Collins

"The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems."

- James C. Collins

"The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline–a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place."

- James C. Collins

"Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests."

- James C. Collins

"Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time… if you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated."

- James C. Collins

"Great companies respond with thoughtfulness and creativity, driven by a compulsion to turn unrealized potential into results; mediocre companies react and lurch about, motivated by fear of being left behind."

- James C. Collins

"If we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes."

- James C. Collins

"Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline."

- James C. Collins

"Transformations are different from the perspective of those looking at it from the outside vs those going through it (on the inside)."

- James C. Collins

"Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life."

- Jim Collins

"Every good-to-great company had Level 5 leadership during the pivotal transition years. • “Level 5” refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with Level 5 at the top. Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves. • Level 5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure. • Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company. • Level 5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions. • Level 5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence—more plow horse than show horse. • Level 5 leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. The comparison CEOs often did just the opposite—they looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results."

- James C. Collins

"Indeed, the real question is not, “Why greatness?” but “What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?” If you have to ask the question, “Why should we try to make it great? Isn’t success enough?” then you’re probably engaged in the wrong line of work."

- Jim Collins

"First Who ... Then What. We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are."

- James C. Collins

"When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you’ve had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered."

- Jim Collins

"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. The management team"

- James C. Collins

"Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action. Within each of these three stages, there are two key concepts, shown in the framework and described below. Wrapping around this entire framework is a concept we came to call the flywheel, which captures the gestalt of the entire process of going from good to great."

- James C. Collins

"I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great."

- Jim Collins

"A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness."

- James C. Collins

"What separates people is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life."

- Jim Collins

"Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated."

- Jim Collins

"People are not your most important asset. The right people are."

- James C. Collins

"Good is the enemy of great."

- James C. Collins

"Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life."

- James C. Collins

"Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how?"

- James C. Collins

"We believe that almost any organization can substantially improve its stature and performance, perhaps even become great, if it conscientiously applies the framework of ideas we’ve uncovered."

- James C. Collins

"Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice."

- James C. Collins

"Yes, the world is changing, and will continue to do so. But that does not mean we should stop the search for timeless principles."

- James C. Collins

"If you’re engaged in work that you love and care about, for whatever reason, then it is impossible to imagine not trying to make it great. It’s just a given."

- James C. Collins

"You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality."

- James C. Collins

"Enduring great companies don’t exist merely to deliver returns to shareholders. Indeed, 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

"No company can grow revenues consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company."

- James C. Collins

"The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems. The comparison companies had a penchant for doing just the opposite, failing to grasp the fact that managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great."

- James C. Collins

"To make the shift from a company with sustained great results to an enduring great company of iconic stature, apply the central concept from Built to Last: Discover your core values and purpose beyond just making money."

- James C. Collins

"Tremendous power exists in the fact of continued improvement and the delivery of results."

- James C. Collins

"It’s not how you compensate your executives, it’s which executives you have to compensate in the first place. If you have the right executives on the bus, they will do everything within their power to build a great company, not because of what they will “get” for it, but because they simply cannot imagine settling for anything less."

- James C. Collins

"Good to great comes about by a cumulative process—step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel—that adds up to sustained and spectacular results."

- James C. Collins

"Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with going from good to great. Ten of eleven good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often."

- James C. Collins

"There was a certain Churchillian character to what we were doing. We had a very strong will to live... by god, we are going to win this thing. It might take us a hundred years, but we will persist for a hundred years, if that’s what it takes."

- James C. Collins

"Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly."

- James C. Collins

"There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away."

- James C. Collins

"A culture of discipline involves a duality. On the one hand, it requires people who adhere to a consistent system; yet, on the other hand, it gives people freedom and responsibility within the framework of that system."

- James C. Collins

"The good-to-great companies built a consistent system with clear constraints, but they also gave people freedom and responsibility within the framework of that system."

- James C. Collins

"A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at."

- James C. Collins

"Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast."

- James C. Collins

"We must retain faith that we will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties."

- James C. Collins

"When you do this, you will start to grow, inevitably, toward becoming a Level 5 leader."

- James C. Collins

"If you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great."

- James C. Collins

"Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people."

- James C. Collins

"Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was . . . just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But . . . it was an outgrowth of everything we’d been doing since [1945]."

- James C. Collins

"In short, your challenge will no longer be how to go from good to great, but how to go from great to enduring great."

- James C. Collins

"The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse."

- James C. Collins

"We should only do those things that we can get passionate about."

- James C. Collins

"The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts. Indeed,"

- James C. Collins

"Visionary companies make some of their best moves by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and—quite literally—accident. What looks in retrospect like brilliant foresight and preplanning was often the result of “Let’s just try a lot of stuff and keep what works.”"

- Jim Collins

"Facts are better than dreams."

- James C. Collins

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

- James C. Collins

"To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity."

- James C. Collins

"The Hedgehog Concept simplifies a complex world and makes decisions much easier."

- James C. Collins

"George Rathmann avoided this entrepreneurial death spiral. He understood that the purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline—a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place."

- James C. Collins

"Technology becomes an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it."

- James C. Collins

"It is your Work in life that is the ultimate seduction."

- James C. Collins

"Those who leave the biggest footprints... have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’"

- James C. Collins

"What drives your economic engine?"

- James C. Collins

"Most men would rather die, than think. Many do."

- James C. Collins

"The “yes-men” problem is mentioned here. The author says that even though “yes-people” can be pleasing to a leader, they will be disastrous in the long term because they serve to obscure the real problems."

- James C. Collins

"Even though many people think that being a great leader means being ambitious and having a certain reputation, this is not true at all."

- James C. Collins

"Creativity dies in an indisciplined environment."

- Jim Collins

"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."

- Jim Collins

"Life is unfair- sometimes to our advantage, sometimes to our disadvantage. We will all experience disappointments and crushing events somewhere along the way, setbacks for which there is no ‘reason,’ no one to blame… What separates people… is not the presence or absence of difficulty, but how they deal with the inevitable difficulties of life."

"Take advantage of difficult economic times to hire great people, even if you don’t have a specific job in mind."

"Consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset."

"Good to great comes about by a cumulative process- step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel — that adds up to sustained and spectacular results."

"Crawl, walk, run can be a very effective approach, even during times of rapid and radical technological change."

"If you can’t be the best at something, don’t do it."

"Being 'good' isn’t good enough. Find what you can be the great at, and do that."

"Your goal shouldn’t be 'be the best,' but rather understand what you can be the best at."

"It occurs to me, Jim, that you spend too much time trying to be interesting. Why don't you invest more time being interested?"

"I want to look out from my porch at one of the great companies in the world someday and be able to say, ‘I used to work there.’"

"There is no worse mistake in public leadership."

"Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well, and they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility when things go poorly."

"The good-to-great leaders understood three simple truths."

"It is not the content of a company’s values that correlates with performance, but the strength of conviction with which it holds those values, whatever they might be."

"The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with."

"Core values are essential for enduring greatness, but it doesn’t seem to matter what those core values are."

"A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising."