Copyright 2019 |Blue Sky Leadership Consulting | All rights reserved

Volume 6

Issue 28

The Best of Jim Collins By Jim Collins

Reviewed by Peter Braeuler

About the Author Jim Collins is a student and teacher of leadership and what makes

enduring great companies. He began his research and career as a faculty

member of Stanford Graduate School of Business. He Founded a

management laboratory in Boulder, CO. in 1995 where he continues his

research. His 25-year quest – what makes great companies tick?

He has a BA in Mathematical Science and an MBA from Stanford

University. He has two honorary doctoral degrees. He is an avid rock

climber.

BLUE SKY LEADERSHIP CONSULTING | 210-219-9934 | PETER@BLUESKYLEADERSHIP.COM

Blue Sky Leadership Consulting works with organizations to leverage Strategic Thinking and Execution Planning and we encompass many

of the principles in these books into our Four DecisionsTM methodology and development of your company’s Growth Roadmap™. Need

to grow top line revenue? Improve bottom-line profits? Build accountable and trusting teams? Improve cash flow? Develop leadership

team members? Contact us for a free consultation

About the Book

His books are studies of contrasts and looking at companies through different lenses (of when they

are small). Greatness is not a function of circumstances; it is of choices: level 5 ambition, fanatic

discipline, empirical creativity and productive paranoia. The signature of mediocrity – chronic

inconsistency.

How can good companies, mediocre companies, and even bad companies achieve enduring

greatness? How do you turn companies with great results into enduring great companies? Why do

some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos while others don’t? How do the mighty fall and

how far can they fall and still reverse course?

The Book’s ONE THING (Pulling back the curtain on Jim Collins)

Life is people - life is short

Life is doing meaningful things with the ones you love

Increase simplicity; manage time and flow state; manage time with family & friends

192

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The Books

Built to Last (©1994, 1997, 2002) should be titled Worthy of Lasting A six-year research project looking at 18 truly exceptional and long-lasting companies compared to one of its top

competitors…What makes the truly exceptional companies different from the comparison companies and what

were the common practices these enduringly great companies followed throughout their history?” (back cover)

Good To Great (©2001) Over 15,000 hours of research over 5 years asking the question of how DOES a company go from GOOD to GREAT?

Why can some companies achieve this and others not?

Good to Great and the Social Sectors – a monograph to accompany Good to Great (©2005) Taking the framework of Good to Great and redefining them for the Social Sector

How the Mighty Fall (©2009) A 4-year study asking “How do the mighty fall? Can decline be detected early and avoided? How far can a

company fall before the path toward doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can companies reverse

course? Collings confronts these questions offering leaders the well-founded hope that they can learn how to

stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course.” (inside flap)

Great By Choice (©2011) A team of more than 20 researchers in a 9-year study of companies that rose to greatness – over 15 years – in

environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control asking the

question - Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? (inside flap)

Turning the Flywheel – a Monograph to accompany Good to Great (©2019) “For a truly great company, the Big Thing is never any specific line of business or product or idea or invention. The

Big Thing is your underlying flywheel architecture, properly conceived. If you get your flywheel right, it can guide

and drive momentum for at least a decade, and likely much longer.” P.8 This monograph takes an updated look at

the steps necessary to capture your flywheel.

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common to all great enduring companies

• Shows how to lay a foundation for greatness while a company is still small and

adaptable . . . how to set values, purpose, and mission, and instill them into the

very roots of your organization

• Demonstrates how to develop the most effective leadership style for your

specific situation

• Shows how to translate vision into effective day-to-day business tactics –and

how to foster consistent tactical excellence in everything your company does

• Explains how to resolve the critical strategic issues faced by every small and

mid-sized firm

• Prevents a set of concepts—and a host of practical techniques—for stimulating

creativity and maintaining innovation as the company evolves”

The companies in his books

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Leadership Lessons from West Point In 2011, Jim Collins was offered West Point’s Class of 1951 Chair for the study of leadership. Only 7 individuals

have had that honor. He consolidated lessons from that experience into a 2015 talk to the Global Leadership

Summit into Seven Questions: learnings from Young Leaders. Here they are:

1. What cause do you serve with level five ambition?

•Inspiring people to serve a cause rather than you.

2. Will you settle for being a good leader or will you grow to become a great leader?

•Getting people to want to do what must be done

3. How can you reframe failure as growth, in pursuit of a BHAG?

4. How can you succeed by helping others succeed?

•Service, growth, communal success

5. Have you found your hedgehog - your personal hedgehog?

•Passion, what you are encoded for (not good at), economic engine

6. Will you build your unit - your minibus - into a pocket of greatness?

•Focus on your unit and not your career

•Be rigorous, not ruthless about your people

7. How will you change the lives of others

•A lot OR a few

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May 2012 – Fortune growth summit in Atlanta

Collins stated that his studies are studies of contrast – the circumstances are the same – greatness is NOT a function of circumstance – it IS about choices and discipline. Your roadmap to greatness:

I. People FIRST – Get the right people on the bus in the right seats and keep them. THEN determine where do I drive the bus.

II. Leadership – move from level 4 to level 5 – Humility combined with unstoppable will. Aspire to be the dumbest person in the room; ask others what they think; be interested rather than interesting; confront the brutal facts. See ourselves in service to a cause, culture, or purpose.

III. In a world of chaos great companies thrive because of: a. Level 5 ambition b. Fanatical discipline

c. Empirical creativity d. Productive paranoia

IV. The discipline of the 20-mile march and consecutive performance; manage for the quarter and the century. This creates consistency, discipline, energy conservation, and NO EXCUSES.

V. Change enabled through consistency – the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency. VI. Big Bets – don’t bet on the unknown or unproven. Fire bullets THEN cannonballs

The Role of Luck – Luck is a discrete event – you didn’t cause it; there are potentially significant consequences (good or bad); and there is a degree of unpredictability. Now what is your ROL – return on luck? What do you DO with the event? 10xrs multiply it and others squander it. And the most important luck is not WHAT but WHO! Who luck is the most important – honor relationships, mentors, people we love. We also must be attuned to luck events. Prepare for the unexpected and execute well. He discussed the power of PRODUCTIVE PARANOIA. Always be vigilant about the things that could kill you. Always be aware of things that could hurt you so you must determine how you will succeed in spite of…Ask what if…what if…what if? It’s what you do before the storm comes – before you need them. Stay alive and absorb sock after shock. How long can you go with zero revenues? 1 week, 1 month, 6 months, 12 months? What Guerrilla are you currently ignoring that could kill you? One big client? Disability? Lack of passive income stream?

Zoom IN – Zoom out – Recognize guerillas.

Collins 10 actions or to do items to build something GREAT!

1. Change your next big WHAT question into a WHO question

2. Double your questions to statements ratio

3. Embrace the Stockdale Paradox – Get DECKED – not 100% getup and Again [Brutal Facts Meetings]

4. Discover your personal HEDGEHOG – where you can be useful; what you are wired to do

5. Set your VISION on 3 components – 100-year core values; 15 to 25-year BHAG; Who would miss you

6. Set your 20-mile march

7. Start a STOP doing list – Get to no more than THREE priorities

8. Turn off your electronic gadgets one day every two weeks – REFLECT

9. Get huge RETURN on your next LUCK event

10. Change from striving to be successful to being USEFUL [Ying and Yang]

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Tim Ferris interviews Jim Collins – Podcast # 361 This interview was – incredible! If you have never listened to Tim, do it now. Let’s highlight my top three insights from this rare conversation with Jim Collins

1. His research style is punctuated by his ability to ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION. For example, he shared the Good to Great premise that it should not be a leadership answer but the differences in leaders. (every company has buildings…) and in that vein they discovered the pyramid of hierarchies or 5 levels of leadership. When it came to Humility, they looked at every letter, email, etc., sometimes over 50-100 years; counted the You vs. I, times on cover of a magazine, taking responsibility for the bad to assess what genuine humility manifested itself.

2. He is his own lab rat. He studies his own use of time – for 10 years. When he became self-employed he determined that to ensure his future works did not have a half life (half as good as the last) he needed to spend his time as follows: 50% - new creative intellectual work; 30% - teaching; 20% - other stuff; He started with a triple stop watch, spreadsheet and description of each day in 3 cells, calculated over 365 days. He also reviewed the difference of good vs bad days over a 5-year period and determined that the best days came down to either: solitude of hard work or time with people he loved.

3. The Flywheel – the question of what the dramatic moment was when the company “broke through” or what was the ONE PUSH of the flywheel… is a ridiculous question. It was a lot of steps or series of good decisions and an underlying sequence of momentum that built the great companies.

a. Jim Collins Flywheel

i. Curiosity fed big questions – so he can’t help but

ii. Learn and do research – so he can’t help but

iii. Develop ideas, insights and concepts – so he can’t help but

iv. Write them, teach them, and share them – so he can’t help but

v. Have some impact on the world – so he can’t help but

vi. Get funding to be curious and find the next big question

Good to Great and the Social Sector

“We must reject the idea – well-intentioned, but dead wrong – that the primary path to greatness in the

social sectors is to become “more like a business” … “In my work with nonprofits, I find that they’re in

desperate need of greater discipline – disciplined planning, disciplined people, disciplined governance,

disciplined allocation of resources.” “A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of

greatness.” (p. 1)

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Great by Choice Worksheet (Our handout

from Jan 2014)

20 Mile March What is your 20 Mile March? (Fanatic discipline, high reachable

goal, in your control, Fundamental to your business) [Amazon –

win market share]

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Bullets and Cannon Balls Are you planning to fire the cannon? What are bullets you can shoot to calibrate?

What are some MVP’s – minimum viable products that will delight your customer?

[Apple retail stores]

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Lead above the Death Line What are your buffers? Where do you need a PLAN B? What can kill you?

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Return on Luck What is a lucky event that I leveraged well? What is an unlucky event I turned around?

What luck event did I miss? How do I prepare for the worst and seize opportunities when they arise?

_______________________________________________________________________________

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Our Faculty - Our Sponsors – Our Cause

Copyright 2019 |Blue Sky Leadership Consulting | All rights reserved

Volume 6

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Calendar of Events

Robyn’s Nest

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A retrospective of our last ten books ONE THING Start with No You must make clear that you do not take “no” as a personal rejection, but

as an honest decision that can be discussed and perhaps reversed.

Fearless Leadership To be a FEARLESS leader one must lead with Courage, Tenacity and Integrity and when life happens lead with Resilience.

Overcoming Organizational Myopia

Tearing Down Silos! Silos exist in every organization! They must exist! We want silos! — We need silos! — We naturally form silos!

The Gifts of Imperfection

Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of worthiness. It’s about cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection to wake up in the morning and think, “No matter what gets done and how much is left undone, I am enough.”

Essentialism If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.

Living with the Monks

Turning off the “noise” of the world allows you to turn on your inner self. How can you live your life in a more meaningful way?

The Big Leap Remove Your Last Obstacle to Ultimate Success in Wealth, Work, and Love

Bringing Out the Best in People

Gain maximum long-term performance from every employee by predefining the behaviors required for achieving successful results and then applying the appropriate consequences.

All About Them When companies, including yours, relentlessly focus their brand on their customers instead of themselves, they flourish.

The Resilience Factor It’s not what happens to us but how we respond to what happens to us that has the greatest effect on the trajectory of our lives. Everyone Needs Resilience.

Let’s Pan for Some Gold What thought, or idea had the biggest impact on you today?

What is your ONE THING? What one specific action you will

take TODAY from what was discussed?