Good to Great and its predecessor, Built to Last are two of the best selling business books of all time. Built to Last is, in my opinion, a seriously dodgy book that purports to give timeless advice for building enduring companies, by analysing the antics of seriously industrial age companies over the past 50 years. There are, of course, some good principles that emerge, but on the whole, I’d give it a skip.
Good to Great, by Jim Collins (buy it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net) (2001) is a much better aid for 21st century companies battling with the connection economy and how to build a really great company. The one enduring weakness of Collins’ work is that he only focuses on stock market returns as a measure of greatness, rather than societal contribution – but, in his defense, he has very little option given that he was trying to do an objective, scientific analysis.
There are some excellent summaries of Good to Great available online – I’d recommend this PDF document, from Executive summaries.
Good to Great
I enjoyed Good to Great far more than I expected I would (when I had to do a crash course in it for a talk last week).
Most business book authors come up with a thesis then seek out case studies that support it. What I thought was great about this one was the fact that this formula was turned on his head, Collins and co stated with the criteria they felt ws great, then worked out what made it happen, with the odds their findings being coincidence at 17 000 000 to 1. This is in itself makes it worth a read.
Perhaps I just read it at the right time, but I felt that the book clarified a lot of issues I had with regards my own company at the moment…!