1. Good Is The Enemy of Great
"Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of companies never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good - and that is their main problem."
2. Level 5 Leadership
"Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building the company… they are incredibly ambitious – but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves."
3. “First Who… Then What”
"Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people."
4. Confront the Brutal Facts
"When… you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of the situation, the right decisions often become self-evident… And even if all decisions do not become self-evident, one thing is certain: you absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts."
5. The Hedgehog Concept
According to Collins, a Hedgehog concept comes from the interaction of the three circles:
1. What you can do the best in the world?
2. What drives your economic engine?
3. What you are deeply passionate about?
6. A Culture of Discipline
"Few companies have the discipline to discover their Hedgehog Concept, much less the discipline to build consistently within it. They fail to grasp a simple paradox: The more an organization has the discipline to stay within its three circles, the more it will have attractive opportunities."
7. Technology Accelerators
"When used right, technology becomes an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it. The good-to-great companies never began their transitions with pioneering technology, for the simple reason you cannot make good use of technology until you know what technologies are relevant."
8. The Flywheel and the Doom Loop
"No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program… Good to great comes about by a cumulative process – step by step."
9. From Good to Great to Built to Last
"I like to think of Good to Great as providing the core ideas for getting a flywheel turning… while Built to Last outlines the core ideas for keeping a flywheel accelerating long into the future."
Quick Recap
Greatness in business requires a blend of leadership, right team, facing facts, focus, discipline, smart tech use, and consistent effort