Great by Choice (2011) (edit title/settings)

• Rated 5 stars

“I loved Jim Collins' first book- Built to Last and I loved his latest one- Great by Choice. In my mind, this is what a great business book should be - A LOT of research work that builds up to a number of business insights (some of which quite surprising) which are passed to the reader in clear writing style and accompanied by a wealth of short stories to illustrate the points. P.S. The whole second half of the book is dedicated to research methodology! :) The authors mean serious, academic work! Not some fluffy motivational stuff that is based on someone's intuition as opposed to hard, empirical evidence. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“2 "We do not believe that chaos, uncertainty, and instability are good; companies, leaders, organizations, and societies do not thrive on chaos. But they can thrive in chaos." 2-3 If you invested $10,000 in a portfolio of the 10X companies at the end of 1972 ..., your investment would be worth more than $6 million by the end of our study era (through 2002), a performance 32 times better than the general stock market." 7 "Here then is the final study of 10X cases and their comparisons: Amgen matched with Genentech; Progressive to Safeco; Southwest Airlines to PSA; and Stryker to United States Surgical Corporation (USSC). Regarding the selection of Apple as a comparison case, we're aware that as of this writing in 2011, Apple stands as one of the most impressive comeback stories of all time. Our research lens for the Microsoft-versus-Apple contrast focused on the 1980s and 1990s, when Microsoft won big and Apple nearly killed itself. ..." 12 "As the influential management thinker Peter Drucker taught, the best--perhaps even the only--way to predict the future is to create it." 13 "Victory awaits him who has everything in order--luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck." --Roald Amundsen, The South Pole 19 "On the one hand, 10Xers understand that they face continuous uncertainty and that they cannot control, and cannot accurately predict, significant aspects of the world around them. On the other hand, 10Xers reject the idea that forces outside their control or chance events will determine their results; they accept full responsibility for their own fate." -20 "10Xers then bring this idea to life by a triad of core behaviors: frantic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia. Animating these three core behaviors is a central motivating force, Level 5 ambition. ... Fanatic discipline keeps 10X enterprises on track, empirical creativity keeps them vibrant, productive paranoia keeps them alive, and Level 5 ambition provides inspired motivation." 21 On Peter Lewis, Progressive's CEO, and how he solved the risk of takeover by raiders because the volatility of stock price, due to mismatch of analysts poor estimates based on the fact that the CEO didn't believe in smoothing earnings: "Progressive would become the first SEC-listed company to publish monthly financial statements." 31 In the '90s, Dane Miller, CEO of Bionet, receive no stock options. "His employees had options but he did not. He owned his own equity outright so that his personal fortune linked directly to the company's performance on the upside and downside. In a sense, relative to business norms, Miler could have been viewed as the world's most underpaid CEO." 39 "Freely chosen, discipline is absolute freedom." --Ron Serino 41 http://www.crsp.chicagobooth.edu/ 49 What a combined ratio of 96% means: "If you sell $100 of insurance, you should need to pay out no more than $96 in losses plus overhead combined." 69 "You may not find what you were looking for, but you find something else equally important." --Robert Noyce 77 "'Intel Delivers' explains Intel's 10X success much better than 'Intel innovates.' Even more accurate, 'Intel innovates to a necessary threshold, then blows everyone away--utterly, completely, fanatically, obsessively--with it ability to deliver on its innovations, at expected cost, with high reliability and great consistency.'" "'This business lives on the brink of disaster,' said Gordon Moore in 1973, referring to the tendency of overeager technologists to overpromise what they can deliver and then fail to come through with enough reliable chips at affordable costs. Indeed, the original Moore's Law, written in 1965, focused not just on doubling the complexity of integrated circuits per year ..., but also doing so at minimum cost." 78 "The great task, rarely achieved, is to blend creative intensity with relentless discipline so to amplify the creativity rather than destroy it." 91 Apple->Jobs->BOD->Mickey Drexler of Gap->Apples store(s) 92 Tim Cook, a supply-chain expert Before innovation Apple had this discipline: "Overhead cost fell. The cash-to-current-liabilities ratio doubled, and then tripled. Long-term debt shrunk by two-thirds and the ratio of total liabilities to shareholders' equity dropped by more than half from 1998 to 1999." 99 "as soon as there is life there is danger." --Ralph Waldo Emerson 104 higher cash-to-assets & cash-to-liability 105 106 "While the other major airlines cut operations in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Southwest did not cut a single job or a single flight--not one ..." 125 "Most men die of their remedies, and not of their illnesses." --Moliere 138 149 "Look, if you had one shot, or one opportunity\ To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment\ Would you capture it? Or just let it slip?" -- Marshall Bruce Mathers III, "Lose Yourself" 161 165-6 170”

• Rated 4 stars

“Well done and nice application. I particularly enjoyed the comparisons to extreme 'sports' and the business world.”

• Rated 0 stars

“A good read - a nice follow up to the other three (Good to great, Built to last and How the mighty fall). Although Taleb (author of Fooled by randomness) - does criticise the utility of these types of books that try to create a template from the past - I think they worth reading. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“Excellent book and a great extension to the series”

• Rated 0 stars

“Against my better judgement. Not a Collins fan --> and I was right. Based on research up to 2002. Irrelevant. Full of platitudes.”

• Rated 4 stars

“Another wonderful book by Jim Collins with profound research and newly adopted terms for business/life. As Jim describes, maintaining strict, rational discipline is a real challenge in business. Good luck!”

• Rated 5 stars

“I think Collins' books are all amazing and bring great analysis backed by solid, factual evidence.”

• Rated 0 stars

“In ActionCOACH we teach about being Above the Line and thereby, taking control of your life. Jim Collins takes this into the business leadership arena showing how it's now accident why some firms achieve massively when their leaders take complete responsibility and ownership for their actions. The working example comparing Scott versus Edmundson is illuminating in this. The chapter covering the role of luck in success, how viewed by winners and how exploited to full advantage is especially insightful. Another master piece from Jim Collins who if you could only read one business author would be the one to consider. ”

• Rated 0 stars

“Conducting research on what explains excellent performance - individual or corporate - so pulled this book back off the shelf. Collins concludes excelling companies are not bold risk takers, not exceptionally innovative, do not make hasty decisions in the face of quickly changing markets, and are not more lucky than other firms. Success is explained by their risk evaluation and decisoin making process. They tend to test ideas on a smaller scale, analyze mistakes, improve the process and increase the odds of a positive result, then they tend to expand in a controlled manner. Very disciplined in both down and boom markets - they 'shoot bullets' to see what happens before they load the cannonball and risk much more. These companies also have contingency plans should the worst case occur - a lifeboat on standby with a emergency plan - and they grow consistently but not explosively. Good analysis.”