Title: Great By Choice

Author: Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen

Published: 2011/10/11

Version: Audiobook

Pages: 183

Started: 2017/04/24

Finished: 2017/05/21

Rating: 4/5

Goodread Synopsis:

The new question: Ten years after the worldwide bestseller “Good to Great,” Jim Collins returns to ask: Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? In “Great by Choice,” Collins and his colleague, Morten T. Hansen, enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times.
The new study: “Great by Choice” distinguishes itself from Collins’s prior work by its focus on the type of unstable environments faced by leaders today.
The new findings: The best leaders were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. Following the belief that leading in a “fast world” always requires “fast decisions” and “fast action” is a good way to get killed. The great companies changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies.
This book is classic Collins: contrarian, data-driven, and uplifting. He and Hansen show convincingly that, even in a chaotic and uncertain world, greatness happens by choice, not by chance.

My Thoughts:

If you’ve read any of his other books and enjoyed them you will for sure enjoy this book. It has the same flow it has the same type of insight without rehashing old information he already shared.

For those who haven’t read any of his books, he focuses on established businesses typically that have been around for well over a decade and studies why they’ve managed to be where they are at.  This one focused on how they succeeded in economic times where other companies of the same area are struggling.  He then looks to see what of all the companies that are like this managed to have.  Things like great leadership, vision, sticking to it’s core beliefs, etc.

Being that I’m in the process of starting a tech business I had a few reasons for reading this and I always walk away with a  few notes to bring to my business partner for us to think about going forward.

I think that every great book should have at least a few good nuggets of useful information.  I do also believe that anyone who works in a big corporation or even a small one would find this book useful.

Have you guys read this book? Any thoughts?