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Book Review: “Good to Great” by Jim Collins Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Jim Collins’ 2001 best-selling book, Good to Great, has received a great deal of hype over the last eight years, but I am not sure I share the same sentiments. Please feel free to disagree with me—I would understand if you did—since the book is well and simply written, filled with a good message and some valuable insights.
The book has received several critiques in recent months, most notably in the book Luck, Inc. by Michael Raynor. Dr. Bob Sutton summarized my own feelings when he recently wrote, “although it is mediocre research, I think the message has done a lot of good. I just wish that Collins had shown more modesty.”
The validity of Collins’ arguments might be called into question based solely upon the current standings of his eleven “good-to-great” companies. The recent financial crisis complicates the issue of course, but it is certainly noteworthy that of the eleven, three (Circuit City, Fannie Mae, and Gillette) have been bought out or tanked recently and several others have experienced little to no growth relative to the market. The exceptions, Nucor and Wells Fargo, have done very well since the book’s release.
The biggest reason I do not like the book all that much is its overstatements and its research methods. Like most business success books, every idea is branded with a unique phrase and things tend to be over-simplified. This can be helpful to the reader for memory purposes, but phrases about flywheels, doom loops, hedgehogs, and level 5 leaders can wear out their own welcome quite quickly.
Collins is very bold to make sweeping statements about the attributes of successful businesses and their leaders. Though I agree with his ideas and see how they could lead to tremendous growth, I am not sure his method of producing the list of these said qualities is good research.
Finding the eleven successful companies and working backwards to prove that their common characteristics were the driving force behind their success is sort of bad scientific research, whether it is qualitative or quantitative. The book would be more credible in my mind if the research team had matched their findings with pre-existing research outside of Built to Last, Collins’ first bestseller. Retrospective research in this case may have worked and I am not sure how else he could have gone about it, but I am still sort of uncomfortable with it.
The book’s message is what I really do like about Good to Great. Collins’ emphasis on prioritization, simplicity, honesty, hard work, and commitment are all things that every businessman should learn in school, if they happened to miss it growing up. Turns out honesty just might be the best policy—along with humility, selflessness, a good work ethic and a commitment to making an impact. If you have not read it, a quick skim might do you some good.
By Chris Nystrom, Culture Fellow
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