Jim Collins Quotes

“It is not the content of a company’s values that correlates with performance, but the strength of conviction with which it holds those values, whatever they might be. ”

“A culture of discipline is not a principle of business, it is a principle of greatness.”

“The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led–yes. But not tightly managed.”

“You can be passionate all you want, but if you can’t be the best at it or it doesn’t make economic sense, then you might have a lot of fun, but you won’t produce great results.”

“If we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect – people we really enjoy being on the bus with and who will never disappoint us – then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes.”

“For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life.”

“Consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems

“Take advantage of difficult economic times to hire great people, even if you don’t have a specific job in mind.”

“Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.”

“Good is the enemy of great. Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”

“The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems.”

“The best students are those who never quite believe their professors.”

“Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time… if you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated.”

“Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.”

“For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.”

“The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline–a problem that largely goes away if you have the right people in the first place.”

“Core values are essential for enduring greatness, but it doesn’t seem to matter what those core values are.”

“We found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves.”

“A magazine is simply a device to induce people to read advertising.”

“The people we interviewed from the good-to-great companies clearly loved what they did, largely because they loved who they did it with.”