James C. Collins: Greatness

“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.”

James C. Collins book Good to Great

Highlighted section cited in: Lisa Marshall (2004), Speak the Truth and Point to Hope: The Leader's Journey to Maturity. p. 32
Good to Great, 2001
Context: 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.

Love , Life , People , Time

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

James C. Collins

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

“Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”

James C. Collins

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

People

“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

Source: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Life

“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.”

James C. Collins

People , Way , Question

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

James C. Collins

Source: Good To Great And The Social Sectors, 2005, p. 1

Business

“There is a direct relationship between the absence of celebrity and the presence of good-to-great results. Why? First, when you have a celebrity, the company turns into “the one genius with 1,000 helpers.” It creates a sense that the whole thing is really about the CEO. At a deeper level, we found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.”

James C. Collins

James C. Collins, in interview in: Fast Company online magazine, October 2001.

Sense

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

James C. Collins

As cited in: Margaret A. Byrnes, ‎Jeanne Baxter (2006), The Principal's Leadership Counts!. p. 99
Good To Great And The Social Sectors, 2005

Business , Problem

“Most businesses -— like most of anything else in life -— fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great. When you compare great companies with good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness. So, then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocrity into the social sectors?”

James C. Collins

Source: Good To Great And The Social Sectors, 2005, p. 1

Life , Business

“This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary market insights. Nor even is it about having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies. What is a visionary company? Visionary companies are premier institutions -- the crown jewels -- in their industries, widely admired by their peers and having a long track record of making a significant impact on the world around them. The key point is that a visionary company is an organization -- an institution. All individual leaders, no matter how charismatic or visionary, eventually die; and all visionary products and services -- all "great ideas" -- eventually become obsolete. Indeed, entire markets can become obsolete and disappear. Yet visionary companies prosper over long periods of time, through multiple product life cycles and multiple generations of active leaders.”

James C. Collins book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Book abstract, as cited in: Joe Kelly, ‎Louise Kelly (1998), An Existential-systems Approach to Managing Organizations. p. 256
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, 1994

Life , Books , World , Idea