James C. Collins Quotes About Business

Quotes about: Business

• 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.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Technology, People

  "Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don’t". Book by James C. Collins, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 16, 2001.

• Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.

  James C. Collins

  Inspirational, Success, Business

  "Turn on, tune in - or drown in a sea of mediocrity" by Simon Caulkin, www.theguardian.com. September 2, 2006.

• The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you've made a hiring mistake. The best people don't need to be managed. Guided, taught, led-yes. But not tightly managed.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Mistake, People

• It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as "passion" as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Passion, Keys

• The start of the New Year is a perfect time to start a stop doing list and to make this the cornerstone of your New Year resolutions, be it for your company, your family or yourself. It also is a perfect time to clarify your three circles, mirroring at a personal level the three questions... 1) What are you deeply passionate about? 2) What are you are genetically encoded for - what activities do you feel just "made to do"? 3) What makes economic sense - what can you make a living at?

  James C. Collins

  New Year, Business, Years

  "Best new year's resolution? A 'stop doing' list" by James C. Collins, www.jimcollins.com. December 30, 2003.

• We must reject the idea... Well-intentioned, but dead wrong... That the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become "more like a business." Most businesses... Like most of anything else in life... Fall somewhere between mediocre and good.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Fall, Greatness

  "Good to Great and the Social Sectors". Book by James C. Collins, 2005.

• Not one of the good-to-great companies focused obsessively on growth.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Growth, Good To Great

• Level 5 leaders are differentiated from other levels of leaders in that they have a wonderful blend of personal humility combined with extraordinary professional will. Understand that they are very ambitious; but their ambition, first and foremost, is for the company's success. They realize that the most important step they must make to become a Level 5 leader is to subjugate their ego to the company's performance. When asked for interviews, these leaders will agree only if it's about the company and not about them.

  James C. Collins

  Leadership, Business, Humility

• "Growth!" is not a Hedgehog Concept. Rather, if you have the right Hedgehog Concept and make decisions relentlessly consistent with it, you will create such momentum that your main problem will not be how to grow, but how not to grow too fast.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Decision, Growth

• ...the question, Why try for greatness? would seem almost tautological. If you're doing something you care that much about, and you believe in its purpose deeply enough, then it is impossible to imagine not trying to make it great. It's just a given.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Believe, Greatness

• 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 int he wrong line of work.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Real, Greatness

• A great company will have many once-in-a-liftetime opportunities.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Opportunity, Great Company

• Genius of AND. Embrace both extremes on a number of dimensions at the same time. Instead of choosing a OR B, figure out how to have A AND B-purpose AND profit, continuity AND change, freedom AND responsibility, etc.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Responsibility, Numbers

• If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I'd put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn. And the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.

  James C. Collins

  Running, Business, Organization

  "Good to Great". Fast Company Interview, www.fastcompany.com. September 30, 2001.

• For no matter what we achieve, if we don't spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But 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. The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Work, People

  "Good to Great". Book by James C. Collins, 2001.

• The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline.

  James C. Collins

  Business, Discipline, Purpose

  "No more heroes". “Madeleine Bunting's working lives column”, www.theguardian.com. November 3, 2001.

• 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

  Business, Responsibility, Blood

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