Collins’: Great to Built to Last

This concludes our 8-part series reviewing Jim Collins research on Good to Great

Jim Collins and his team researched and wrote Built to Last six years prior to Good-to-Great.  Built to Last tried to answer. “What does it take to start and build an enduring great company from the ground up?…I studied eighteen enduring great companies—institutions that stood the test of time, tracing their founding in some cases back to the 1800s, while becoming the iconic great companies of the late twentieth century.”

“Similar to this book, we used direct comparison…In short, we sought to identify the essential distinctions between great companies and good companies as they endure over the decades, even centuries.”

Role of Built to Last in the Good to Great Research

When writing Good to Great, Collins and his team  “…we made a very important decision. We decided to conduct the research for Good to Great  as if Built to Last  didn’t exist. This was the only way to clearly see the key factors in transforming a good company into a great one with minimal bias from previous work. Then we could return to ask, ‘How, if at all, do the two studies relate.:”

Collins concluded “Now, five years later, with this book complete, we can stand back to look at the two works in the context of each other. Surveying across the two studies, I offer the following four conclusions:”

1. “When I consider the enduring great companies from Built to Last, I now see substantial evidence that in their early years their leaders followed the good-to-great framework. The only real difference is that they did so as entrepreneurs in small, early-stage enterprises trying to get off the ground, rather than as CEOs trying to transform established companies from good to great.”
2. In an ironic twist, I now see Good to Great not as a sequel to Built to Last, but as a prequel . Apply the findings in this book to create sustained great results, as a start-up or an established organization, and then apply the findings in Built to Last to go from great results to an enduring great company.
• Established company or Start-up + Good to Great Concepts –>Sustained Great Results + Built to Last concepts –> Enduring Great Company”
3. “To make the shift from a company with sustained great results to an enduring great company of iconic stature, apply the central concept from Built to Last: Discover your core values and purpose beyond just making money (core ideology) and combine this with the dynamic of preserve the core/stimulate progress.
4. A tremendous resonance exists between the two studies; the ideas from each enrich and inform the ideas in the other. In particular, Good to Great answers a fundamental question raised, but not answered , in Built to Last: What is the difference between a “good” BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and a “Bad” BHAG?” (Jim Collins, Good to Great, 2001, pg188-190)

Apply the Framework to Your Career

Jim Collins and his team discovered how you, as an individual or an organization, can not only move from good-to-great, but also build something that will last. Sometime in the future I will review the principles of Built to Last.

Collins reminds one of his former students that size does not matter in the journey to greatness. Individuals, as well as organizations, may improve their career because of the framework found in Good to Great. I encourage you again to read both Good to Great and Built to Last.Do not rely on one reading to understand the framework. Read it many times. Study it. Apply it to your career. Become something great.

We will examine the Collins concept of BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal).on Friday Join us!