Good to Great: 8th of my Books to Read

I brought myself into a challenge when I picked my 8th books to read.  Because like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, it is equally a nose-bleeding read for me. LoL! Honestly, I dedicated a lot of time reading it.  I read over and over again for me to understand it clearly. Haha!  Sorry naman slow ako!  Another thing,  it consist of illustrations and I found it so challenging.  It was like I went back to college. Well,,,,,it's just part of my self-learning stage.  Kaya keri lang, no complain.

To make an introduction to the book,  "Good to Great" by Jim Collins was a result of a research with great people in about five years.  It is the answers on the question preyed in the mind of Jim Collins, 

"Are these companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-tern superiority?  And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?"

It is about how you take a good organizations and turn it into one that produces, sustain great results, using whatever definition of results best applies to your organization.

Oh ha! Di ba ibang level? 

This book is definitely far from the level of my thinking.  But I know I can use all my lessons learned in the future or even in my daily deals in life.

And here are what I've learned from this book:

1. If you want to leap from good to great, you must employ a level 5 leader.

Level 5 Hierarchy

The author believes that potential level 5 leader exist around us,  if we just know what to look for, and that many people have potential to evolve into level 5.

2. The old adage "People are your most important asset" is wrong.  People are not your most important asset.  The right people are.

3. A primary task in taking company from good to great is to create a culture wherein people have a tremendous opportunity to be heard and ultimately for the truth to be heard.  Spending time and energy trying to "motivate" people is a waste of effort.  The real question is not, "How do we motivate our people?  If you have to right people, they will be self-motivated.  The key is to not de-motivate them.  One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal fact of reality.

4.  The good-to-great companies are more like hedgehogs-simple, dowdy creatures that know "one big thing" and stick to it, not like a foxes who are crafty, cunning creatures that know many things yet lack consistency.

5. A culture of discipline is not just about action.  It is about getting disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who then take disciplined action.

"Stop doing lists" are more important than "to do" lists.

6.  Crawl, walk, run "can be a very effective approach, even during times of rapid and radical technological change.  Technology is an essential driver in accelerating forward momentum.  but when used wrong-when grasped as an easy solution, without deep understanding of how it lines to a clear and coherent concept.  technology simply accelerates your own self-created demise.

7.  If you diligently and successfully apply each concept in the framework, and you continue to push in a consistent direction on the flywheel, accumulating momentum step by step and turn by turn, you will eventually reach breakthrough.  It  might not happen today, or tomorrow, or next week.  It might not even happen next year.  But it will happen. 

8.  It is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life.  And it is difficult to have a meaningful life without a meaningful work.  Perhaps, then, you might gain that rate of tranquility that comes from knowing that you've had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution.  Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions; knowing that your short time here on earth has been well spent and that it mattered.

A good-to-great flywheel

I hope you learned a lot too with my book review.  It's very informative and inspiring too.  You can get a lot of good points during a transition of your organization or even your personal life or career.

Be great Yamisweeters!!