James C. Collins Quotations | Page 2

Creative leadership impact increases in your 50's. When I turn 50 I want to say, "Nice start!"

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.

The critical question is not whether you'll have luck, but what you do with the luck that you get.

That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem.

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.

First figure out your partners, then figure out what ideas to pursue. The most important thing isn't the market you target, the product you develop or the financing, but the founding team.

A company should limit its growth based on its ability to attract enough of the right people.

By definition, it is not possible to everyone to be above the average.

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.

"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.

If your company disappeared, would it leave a gaping hole that could not easily be filled by any other enterprise on the planet?

Not every financial company toppled during the 2008 crisis, and some seized the opportunity to take advantage of weaker competitors in the midst of the tumult.

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.

It's what you do before you are in trouble, so that you can be strong when people most need you.

In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever.

Not all time in life is equal. How many opportunities do you get to talk about what your life is going to add up to with people thinking about the same question?

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It's not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious-but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.

The drive for progress doesn't wait for the external world to say "It's time to change."

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

Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

Change your practices without abandoning your core values.

Good is the enemy of great. That's why so few things become great.

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.

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.

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

True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to.

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

Comparison, a great teacher once told me, is the cardinal sin of modern life. It traps us in a game that we can't win. Once we define ourselves in terms of others, we lose the freedom to shape our own lives.

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 great 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 on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.

An organization is not truly great, if it cannot be great without you.

Managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.

The main point is first get the right people on the bus (and wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor in people decisions in order to take a company from Good to Great.

The inner experience of fallure is totally different than failure. Going to fallure means 100% commitment - you leave nothing in reserve, no mental or physical resource untapped, you never give yourself a psychological out. Failure means making a decision to let go, to be less than 100% committed, when confronted by fear, pain and uncertainty.

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.

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