Summary Of Good To Great By Jim Collins

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A great dilemma that CEOs and entrepreneurs face when managing a middling company is: how do I rise above the state of mediocrity and follow the paradigm of becoming an incredible company? Jim Collins book, Good to Great, offers the answer to that. Good to Great, written by Jim Collins and his research team at Stanford University, offers a comprehensive guide to how companies went from being above average to exceptional in their given field. Through extensive research; using market and company data, and interviews of CEOs, Collins is able to piece together a well outlined book, organized in a fashion that is easy for the reader to follow, as well as comprehend his ideas of becoming an extraordinary company. As well, the reader finds that Collin’s…show more content…
This is due to two reasons that are common in books where research was conducted independently prior to writing, especially in a given time period. The first shortcoming of the book comes from a fallacy that Collins and his research tem committed called “’The ecological fallacy’, the drawing of inferences about individuals based on aggregate level data” (Cambridge Journal). The fallacy is often enacted when a research team has an abundance of information and therefore applies it to all individuals with similar criterion. Collins does this when analyzing the data of the characteristics of ‘Level 5’ leaders, and thus infers that most exceptional leaders portray those similar character traits. “Level 5 Leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understand… [they also] display a workmanlike diligence- more plow horse than show horse” (39). The author and his research team in effect create a generalized assumption of the qualities of leaders that can turn a company from good to great based off data. This is troubling because the reader is only made available the information that the author has provided as Collins points out “of 1,435 companies… in our initial candidate list, only eleven made the very tough cut into our study” (35). Therefore, the reader would have to deduce that these traits of a level 5 leader must be true, based off the analysis of the set of data provided. However, there are examples that counter Collins findings, like the outgoing characteristics of successful great company building CEOs like Mark Cuban and Elon
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