Collins: From Good to Great

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I hope this solution gets to you in time. Jim Collins is a management specialist. His views are based on this. The solution below takes this into account. If you have any questions, just let me know via the feedback section. Good luck with your studies my dear. If you have any questions, just let me know via the feedback section.

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OTA 105878/Xenia Jones
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'Good to Great': Assumptions & Method

Jim Collins is a management specialist. His 2001 book, 'Good to Great' had remained on top of the best-seller list in business books for almost a decade now. It has spawned an industry in penning business panacea books based on researched performance. Indeed it is full of advise and insight that can prove useful to organizations, executives and businesses in relation to turning their performance and that of their organizations from mediocre to one of fantastic performance, becoming market leaders, for example. IN the very beginning of the book, Collins lays out his research strategy. He claims that his 'management laboratory', a 21-person team that studied interviews, performance, history and other pertinent details of chosen organizations, base their conclusions on evidence. In a way, what comes out is an emergent, investigatory piece, a revelation of sorts. We can assume then that since Collins et al calls their think-tank group a laboratory, what is revealed came from semi-scientific procedures. At the very least, it should have followed a pattern of research. He started with a question - "How did good companies turn their fortunes around and became great?". He then went about 'defining' specific terms, a kind of categorization. He defined, for example what 'great' means in relation to business. Great was distilled, according to his view as: Companies that have become financially strong, have taken a great share of the market and have become intensely profitable above and beyond average expectations. As such, he came up with 'notions' of what makes a company great - excellent leadership (level 5), specialization/the right people (right bus,right destination), tackles problems but keeps at it (brutal facts confrontation), does what it does best with passion (the hedgehog concept), disciplined (cottage cheese rinsing), adapts to technological innovations (technology accelerators) and all initiatives, however small add up to fantastic performance (the flywheel). He calls this the 7 great characteristics, albeit using what has become known as 'industry-slang' to refer to them (see the 'slang' in italics and quotes). After having categorized the characteristics, his team then ...