Getting from good to great: a conversation with Jim Collins

Strategy & Leadership contributing editors interviewed researcher Jim Collins. Collins is author of two influential books: Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies co‐authored with Jerry Porras, and Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t. Some key points Collins makes are: The transition from good to great all began with a Level 5 leader. The essence of Level 5 leadership is having an ambition for the cause of the work‐the outcome, the company, the organization‐above the self; also, at the same time, having the ferocious, frightening, terrifying willfulness to act upon that ambition. Most Level 5 leaders understand that their report card only comes in when their successor succeeds. In most cases, but not all, their successors were even more successful than they were. That’s different from the comparison cases, where a number of the executives defined their success in terms of their successor failing. All the good‐to‐great CEOs said “I am not going to answer the ‘What to do’ question until I’ve got the right people. And we will not determine where to drive this bus until we decide who should be on the bus, who should be off the bus, and who should be in what seat.” In the comparison companies, you have leaders who often came in with “the what” and then tried to get everybody to go there, whereas the good‐to‐great companies had leaders who began with the “who” and then figured it out from there. The idea that you first get the right team and only later figure out where to drive the bus is absolutely contrary to what everyone learned in business school. The great companies understood what they could absolutely be the best in the world at. And also, “If we can’t be the best in the world at it then we shouldn’t be doing it.” They wanted to have a profound understanding of their economics and how to fundamentally change them. And they put a high premium on things that they were very passionate about.