"Good to Great" - Jim Rogers

Key points from the Jim Rogers’ “Good to Great” book:


Chapters 1 & 2 – Good is the Enemy of Great & Leadership

Great companies have the following traits:

• Their leaders had Personal Humility & Professional Will
• Their leaders attribute success to their managers and staff & take full responsibility for failures. They also attribute their personal success to a lot of luck.
• The Executives who ignited transformation from good to great did not first figure out strategy/vision (i.e. "where to drive the bus". They first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off) and then figured a way to drive it.
• Their CEOs were bred from within the company & succession planning was a key focus to ensure the company could persist.
• Executive compensation, strategy, technology, M&As were NOT key drivers to their success
• They established a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you dont need hierarchy, when you have disciplined though you dont need bureaucracy, when you have disciplined action you don't need excessive controls.

Chapter 3 – First Who…Then What.

• Don’t hire for the sake of hiring – wait for the right people/person
• The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led-yes. But not tightly managed.
• Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems
• For no matter what we achieve, if we don’t spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, we cannot possibly have a great life. But if we spend the vast majority of our time with people we love and respect, then we will almost certainly have a great life, no matter where the bus goes.

Chapter 4 – Confront the Truth

• Expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time. If you have the right people on the bus, they will be “self-motivated”.
• Ask them a lot of questions rather than pretending to have the answers to everything.
• Engage & Encourage heated dialogue & debate, not through coercion
• Take responsibility for bad decisions, never assign blame

TO BE CONTINUED...