12/01/14 - 12/05/14: Reading Summary

12/06/14: 5:30 PM 

This week, I started to read a book on Entrepreneurship.  This book is called Good to Great by Jim Collins.

So far, so good.  I find this book very interesting as Collins comments on the inner workings of how companies go from, well, good to great.  What interests me is that this book resonates within the scope of what we are doing in class.  While we aren't quite at the stages that Collins is commenting on, it is really intriguing learning what might go on when we launch our own companies (if we do).  On page 12, there was a diagram that essentially explains the process of companies vastly improving.

What stuck out most to me was the put-down of a certain component of success (or that was thought to lead to success) on the following page.  Collins wrote that he "expected that good-to-great- leaders would being by setting a new vision and strategy."  Instead of that, he found that "they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it."  This stuck out to me because I always had the assumption that to improve one had to have a brilliant idea and follow.  Now however, I can see that it is the people that you have with you (the right ones at that) that will help you to know where you're going. 

I also read about how companies do not go from good to great in one leap.  While this seems to be common sense, as no companies go from naught to sixty overnight, it is never thought about.  I think a reason that some entrepreneurs, or companies, or products don't reach their full potential because they have set their expectations too low.  When they finally get to the point where they think they have become great, they stop putting in as much work, and this separates the good companies from the great companies.  The great companies never assume that they have reached their maximum (maybe there isn't a maximum?), and keep thinking they can go the extra mile, and they can.

All of that ties into Collins' point about confronting the "Brutal Facts".  One has to be willing to accept that they will have difficulties, and that their company might not become great, but at the same time they have to firmly believe that they will become great.  I think that the people that can't grasp this ideas are the ones that never make it to great because they either don't think they can make it (and they don't) or they think they will make it with no problems and they will make it quickly (and they don't because they give up after failure or a non-success).

More commentary coming next week!

C4E Associate:

Noah Mark