Good to Great

Each of these features of good-to-great (GTG) companies is briefly examined. For a more detailed discussion, consult the original text. 

Sticking to your competencies is a modem management mantra, but good-to-great companies deeply understand the business Ihey are in and have figured out how to reduce sustained profitability to simple strategic and financial formulas. In doing so, they understand (1) what they can be die best at, (2) what is their economic denominator, and (3) what is dieir passion. 

Consider an organization with which you are familiar. In a brief essay, identify the ways in which the organization does or does not follow the principles of a good-to-great organization as discussed above. 

Go to the cuiTent business press and find an article on a company touted as an up-and-coming star. Analyze the company in terms of the good-to-great criteria discussed in the chapter and predict whether you believe the company s rise is sustainable or unsustainable. Write a short essay explaining your answer. 

Repeat Exercise 4 using one of the company s listed in Jim Collins s (2001) book Good to Great. Use one of the good-to-great companies or the reference not-so-great companies. 

Jim Collins, author of the bestseller Good to Great, has written that social or organizational innovation is often more important to business success than technical innovation. Write an essay debating the merits and shortcomings of this argument. 

COASE, R. H. (1990). The flrm, the market, and the law. Chicago University of Chicago Press. Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. New York HarpeiColUns. 

A different concept to enhancing leadership effectiveness was presented by Jim Collins (2001) in his book, Good to Great. He encouraged the development of a stop doing list by business leaders. Collins s rationale for this concept is that leaders lead busy lives with many to do lists. By developing a stop doing list, leaders can channel their resources into a few focused areas. 

J. C. Collins, Good to Great Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don t Collins, 2001... 

All good-to-great companies began the process of finding a path to greatness by confronting the brutal facts of their current reality. ... 

Jim Collins, Good to Great, Harper Business, New York, 2001. 

Collins, J., 1999. Good to Great. Sydney, Australia Random House. 

In Chapter 1 we discussed Collins s book Good to Great. We described the hedgehog concept, which was one of the two fnndamental steps in transformation to a great company. Part of this concept was the determination of what the company needed to measure. For example, it was critical to Walgreens to measure profit per customer visit, rather than profit per store or profit per territory. This was not a simple or trivial decision. Collins reported that companies took an average of three years to develop a successful hedgehog concept. 

Collins, J Good to great Why some companies make the leap—and others don t. New York HarperBusiness, 2001. 

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