Good to great common sense

You would think it would be exceedingly complicated to run a great company for 20 years or more.

And yet many of the insights in Jim Collins’ ‘Good to Great’ seem like common sense.

‘Don’t be jumping around trying loads of things, pick one endeavour and stick to it’ is something I could hear my granny telling me and yet there is a chapter with a similar concept in the book.

‘Confront the brutal facts’ is one of the refrains in the book and it seems such basic advice to me that it didn’t need mentioning. But low and behold Mr. Collins and his team had dozens of examples of companies where management had their heads in the sand, unable or unwilling, to confront the brutal facts of their reality. Just tipping along in denial.

Evolutionary progress is better than drastic changes.

I realise I don’t run a company and never have but it seemed funny just how basic and simple the concepts were.