Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
Jim Collins$27.50(USD)
The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.
But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?
The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?
The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.
The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?
Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.
The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:
- Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
- The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
- A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
- The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.
“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”
Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?
A Good Year
Various Artists$18.97(USD)
In a distinct break from their muscular triumph
Gladiator, Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott teamed up again to bring Peter Mayle's sunny Provençal romance to the screen, a change of milieu that's spawned an equally warm, often sentimentally tinged soundtrack and score. Using a trio of pop songs by the great Harry Nilsson (including the joyous demo of
Nilsson Schmilsson's "Gotta Get Up") as an axis that's as effusive as it is unlikely, this is a collection that romps through Franco-pop nuggets variously contemporary (Makali's elegant "Il Faut du Temps..."), vintage (Charles Trenet's "Je Chante," Jean Sablon's "J'Attendrai," Tino Rossi's "Le Chant du Guardian"), and downright loopy (Richard Anthony's French redux of "Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini"), making room for Patti Page, Josephine Baker, and Delaney & Bonnie along its merry way. Also included are three cues from newcomer Marc Streitenfeld's underscore, a nimble exercise in instrumental post-modernism whose electronica/folk/neoclassical mélange is as eclectic as the song choices, yet characterized by subtlety and grace.
--Jerry McCulley
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Revised and Updated
David D. Burns$7.99(USD)
The good news is that anxiety, guilt, pessimism, procrastination, low self–esteem, and other "black holes" of depression can be cured without drugs. In Feeling Good, eminent psychiatrist, David D. Burns, M.D., outlines the remarkable, scientifically proven techniques that will immediately lift your spirits and help you develop a positive outlook on life. Now, in this updated edition, Dr. Burns adds an All–New Consumer's Guide To Anti–depressant Drugs as well as a new introduction to help answer your questions about the many options available for treating depression.
– Recognise what causes your mood swings
– Nip negative feelings in the bud
– Deal with guilt
– Handle hostility and criticism
– Overcome addiction to love and approval
– Build self–esteem
– Feel good everyday
The Good Thief
Hannah Tinti$19.95(USD)
Richly imagined, gothically spooky, and replete with the ingenious storytelling ability of a born novelist,
The Good Thief introduces one of the most appealing young heroes in contemporary fiction and ratifies Hannah Tinti as one of our most exciting new talents.
Twelve year-old Ren is missing his left hand. How it was lost is a mystery that Ren has been trying to solve for his entire life, as well as who his parents are, and why he was abandoned as an infant at Saint Anthony’s Orphanage for boys. He longs for a family to call his own and is terrified of the day he will be sent alone into the world.
But then a young man named Benjamin Nab appears, claiming to be Ren’s long-lost brother, and his convincing tale of how Ren lost his hand and his parents persuades the monks at the orphanage to release the boy and to give Ren some hope. But is Benjamin really who he says he is? Journeying through a New England of whaling towns and meadowed farmlands, Ren is introduced to a vibrant world of hardscrabble adventure filled with outrageous scam artists, grave robbers, and petty thieves. If he stays, Ren becomes one of them. If he goes, he’s lost once again. As Ren begins to find clues to his hidden parentage he comes to suspect that Benjamin not only holds the key to his future, but to his past as well.
From the Hardcover edition.
