After sometime you get tired of reading non-fiction books on management. The reason is that most of them literally shout at your face to do this, or do that or follow the umpteenth habit of a highly effective person and so on and so forth, which seems all very banal. More or less you have already come across such concepts during your MBA and the language of such books is very dull and rhetorical.

            But the sheer persistence of our Organization Behavior and Development teacher compelled me to pick up the book ‘Good to Great’ after a great hesitation. This book by Jim Collins was also the reference book for my assignment. May be it was the greed of marks why I chose it in the first place but I was intrigued by its approach to management.

            After his very successful ‘Built to Last’ Jim Collins has compiled a well researched book on companies that have successfully transformed themselves from good to great. ‘Good to Great’ is an outcome of 5 years of research on data of 15 years of 11 companies shortlisted from 1435 Fortune 500 companies since 1965. And to one’s surprise it does not include GE or Pepsi or Citigroup or for that matter any other company that you read about everyday in the newspaper.  It includes those companies that you may have not heard off until 15-20 years back. Suddenly they popped out of no where to tell the world of their presence, give a challenging fight to the best company in their field and then beat them.

            The USP of the book is that every finding is backed by empirical data research which makes it very credible. Jim Collins has successfully translated abstract concepts such as Level 5 leadership, First Who……..Then What, Stockdale Paradox, The Hedgehog Concept, A Culture of Discipline, Technology Accelerators and The Flywheel and the Doom Loop for the average person to understand. These concepts may appear to be very simple but we rarely notice them around us and hence we always try to do something different to achieve success. All the OD-OB theory appears use less when in fact it is used less.

            More or less ‘Good to Great’ attempts to uncover the secrets of those 11 companies that have successfully outperformed the stock market by over 3 times for a consistent period of 15 years (this list does not include GE, Bank of America, Walmart, Exonn, Dailmer Chrysler, Toyota etc.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and for a practicing manager it helps him transcend himself, cross the Rubicon and establish an organization that the world will remember after for a long time after he has left it.