"Good is the enemy of great." It's one of those lines that sounds like a motivational poster in a dentist's office, but for Jim Collins, it was the starting gun for a five-year obsession. Most people think they know the book. They’ve heard the catchphrases. They talk about "getting the right people on the bus" during happy hour. But honestly, most of them haven't actually looked at the data—or the carnage that followed.
Jim Collins and his team of 21 researchers spent half a decade digging through 1,435 companies. They weren't looking for companies that were always successful. That’s easy. They were looking for the "leapers"—the ones that were average for fifteen years and then suddenly, almost magically, outperformed the market by at least three times for the next fifteen.
They found eleven. Just eleven.
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The names? Some are legendary. Others, like Circuit City and Fannie Mae, now serve as cautionary tales. But the why behind their rise remains the most debated framework in management history. If you're trying to figure out why your project is stalling or why your company feels stuck in "pretty good" territory, you've gotta understand what Collins actually discovered versus the myth.
The Level 5 Myth and the Ego Trap
We love a celebrity CEO. We want the visionary, the loud-talker, the person who looks good on a magazine cover. But Collins found the opposite. The leaders who took companies from good to great weren’t "rock stars." They were more like Columbo—quiet, reserved, even a bit shy.
He called them Level 5 Leaders.
These people have this weird duality: intense professional will mixed with genuine personal humility. Think of Darwin Smith at Kimberly-Clark. He was the company lawyer, a guy nobody expected much from. When he took over, he didn't give a grand speech. He just quietly sold off the coated-paper mills—the very thing the company was built on—because he realized they were mediocre at it. He was "unflinching," as Collins puts it.
It's not about being nice
Don't mistake humility for weakness. Level 5 leaders are "fanatically driven," basically infected with an incurable need to produce results. They don't want the credit. When things go well, they look out the window at their team. When things go south, they look in the mirror. Most "good" companies have Level 4 leaders—talented, charismatic, but ultimately more interested in their own legacy than the company’s 20-year future.
First Who, Then What: The Bus Metaphor
Here is where most managers mess up. They set a vision, they build a strategy, and then they try to find people to execute it. Collins says that's backwards.
If you start with the "who," it’s much easier to pivot. If people are on the bus because of the destination, what happens when you need to change direction? They get off. But if they’re on the bus because they love the people they're working with and they’re "A-players," they’ll help you find a better destination.
The rigor of the "Who"
- When in doubt, don't hire. Keep looking.
- When you know you need to make a change, act. The moment you feel the need to "tighten" management on someone, you've already made a hiring mistake.
- Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.
I’ve seen companies do the opposite so many times. They take their star performer and say, "Hey, go fix this dying department." Now you’ve got a frustrated star and a still-dying department. Great companies use those stars to blow the roof off their most promising projects instead.
The Hedgehog Concept: Finding Your "One Big Thing"
In the famous Greek parable, the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. The fox is crafty, trying a thousand different ways to catch the hedgehog. The hedgehog just rolls into a ball. Every time. It’s simple, and it works.
To get your Hedgehog Concept, you need the intersection of three circles:
- What you are deeply passionate about.
- What you can be the best in the world at (and honestly, what you can't be).
- What drives your economic engine (your "profit per X").
This isn't a "strategy." It’s an understanding. Wells Fargo, for instance, realized they couldn't be the best global bank, but they could be the best at running a bank like a business, focusing on the "profit per employee" metric. They stopped trying to be everything to everyone and just became a very efficient machine.
Confronting the Brutal Facts (The Stockdale Paradox)
This is probably the most "human" part of the book. It’s named after Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He survived by holding two seemingly contradictory beliefs:
- You must have unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end.
- You must, at the same time, confront the most brutal facts of your current reality.
The optimists—the ones who said "We'll be out by Christmas"—were the ones who died of broken hearts. The ones who looked at the cold, hard walls of their cell and said, "This is going to suck for a long time, but I'm still going to make it," were the ones who walked out.
In business, this means creating a culture where "the truth is heard." You don't need "motivational" speeches. If you have the right people, they’re already motivated. What you need is to stop lying to yourselves about your declining market share or your buggy software.
The Flywheel vs. The Doom Loop
Success never happens in one "big bang." There’s no single lucky break, no miracle acquisition. Instead, it’s like pushing a massive, heavy flywheel. At first, it takes agonizing effort to get it to move an inch. You keep pushing. Two inches. A foot. Eventually, the weight of the wheel starts working for you. Momentum takes over.
The Doom Loop is what happens when companies get impatient. They try a new CEO, then a new strategy, then a "radical restructuring." They push the wheel one way, then stop and push it the other. They never build momentum. They just get tired.
What Happened to the "Great" Companies?
Look, we have to address the elephant in the room. Some of the companies in the book—Circuit City, Fannie Mae, and to an extent, Wells Fargo (with its 2016 scandal)—fell off the pedestal.
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Does that mean the book is wrong?
Not necessarily. Collins later wrote How the Mighty Fall to explain this. Greatness isn't a permanent state. It’s a practice. If you stop doing the things that made you great—if you start hiring the wrong people or lose your Hedgehog Concept—the flywheel slows down. The principles are like the laws of physics. If you stop flapping your wings, you're going to hit the ground. Gravity doesn't care that you used to be a great flyer.
Practical Next Steps for Your Team
If you want to actually use this, don't just buy the book and put it on a shelf. Do these three things this week:
- Conduct an "Autopsy without Blame": Pick a recent project that failed. Don't look for someone to fire. Look for the "brutal facts." Where did the logic break down?
- Audit Your "Bus": Look at your top three priorities. Are your absolute best people leading them? If not, move them.
- Find Your "Profit per X": Stop looking at top-line revenue for a second. What is the one single ratio that, if you increased it, would have the biggest impact on your long-term sustainability? Is it profit per customer? Profit per store? Profit per line of code? Identify it and obsess over it.
Greatness isn't about luck. It's about the disciplined rejection of "good enough." It's hard, it’s often boring, and it requires a level of honesty that most people find uncomfortable. But as Collins proves, the alternative is just being another company that eventually disappears.