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00:00Hey, and welcome. Today, we're going to dive into one of the most influential business books ever written, Good to
00:05Great by Jim Collins.
00:07We're going straight to the source, his team's incredible research, to unpack the timeless principles they discovered for making that
00:13leap from just being good to being truly, lastingly great.
00:17So it all kicked off with this one deceptively simple question. To answer it, Collins and his team launched this
00:23massive five-year research project.
00:25I mean, they were sifting through thousands of articles and interviews, just trying to find out if there was some
00:30kind of blueprint for greatness.
00:32The real spark for this whole thing? Well, it came from some pretty blunt feedback.
00:37You see, Collins' previous book, Built to Last, studied companies that were pretty much great from the start.
00:42But what about, well, pretty much everyone else? The companies that start out just okay. How do they make the
00:48jump?
00:49That's the mystery we're going to dig into today.
00:51Okay, let's get right into it and shatter the first big myth.
00:55The conventional wisdom, what everyone thinks, is that to be great, you need a rock star CEO, right?
01:00A larger-than-life personality brought in from the outside to save the day.
01:04But what the research found was something completely different.
01:07This is the story we absolutely love to hear.
01:11The celebrity savior, with a big, bold vision, rides in on a white horse, shakes everything up, and single-handedly
01:17wills the company to greatness.
01:18I mean, it makes for a fantastic headline.
01:21But you know what? The research shows it's pretty much a fantasy.
01:24Alan Wurtzel, he was the CEO who transformed Circuit City, and he just nailed the truth with this analogy.
01:30He said the celebrity CEOs are like show horses, you know, all flashed and charisma.
01:35But the leaders who actually achieve greatness, they're plow horses.
01:39They're humble, diligent, and completely focused on the work, not on getting the credit.
01:44But Collins' team actually gave this surprising leadership style a name, Level 5 Leadership.
01:49And it's this weird but incredibly powerful mix.
01:52On one hand, these leaders are humble, they can be shy, almost self-effacing.
01:56But on the other hand, they have this ferocious, absolutely unwavering resolve to do whatever it takes to make the
02:01company great.
02:02And here's a super simple way to picture their mindset.
02:05Level 5 leaders have a really clear pattern.
02:07When the company is winning, they point out the window, giving all the credit to their team, or maybe even
02:12just good luck.
02:13But when things go wrong, they look straight in the mirror and say, that's on me.
02:17I'm responsible.
02:18So you see, it's not about having a huge personality.
02:20It's about having a humble character with a will of iron.
02:24All right, let's move on to the second myth.
02:26And you'll see how this builds.
02:28This one is all about strategy.
02:30We've all been taught that the very first step is to come up with some brilliant vision for where you're
02:35headed.
02:36But, you guessed it, the research found the exact opposite to be true.
02:40The typical playbook is to first figure out where you want to go, that's the what,
02:45and then try to get a bunch of people on board to make it happen.
02:48You know, you set the destination for the bus, and then you try to convince everyone to get on for
02:52the ride.
02:53But the good to great companies?
02:55They completely flipped this script.
02:57They started with this profound insight that just demolishes that old business cliche.
03:02It's not just about having people.
03:04It's about having the right people.
03:06And this is the first who, then what principle.
03:10The great companies focus first on getting a team of disciplined, self-motivated people together.
03:15And get this, David Maxwell at Fannie Mae did this while losing a million dollars a day.
03:20He knew he just had to get the A players on the bus first, because with the right people, you
03:24can adapt to anything.
03:25You can have these intense, rigorous debates, and confront the brutal facts of your reality without crushing morale,
03:30and then you can all figure out where to drive the bus together.
03:33Okay, now for our final myth.
03:35And honestly, this one's a biggie.
03:37We love stories about dramatic, overnight transformations, don't we?
03:41That miracle moment where everything just changes in an instant.
03:44But in reality, good to great doesn't happen that way at all.
03:47We look at a company's amazing success from the outside, and we just assume it came from one bold move,
03:55one genius idea, or some revolutionary new product.
03:58It feels like it happened all at once.
04:01But from the inside, the experience is completely different.
04:05To explain what really happens, Cullens gives us this incredible metaphor of a giant, heavy flywheel.
04:10Just picture a massive, 5,000-pound metal disc sitting completely still.
04:15And your job is to get it to spin.
04:18That first push is just grueling.
04:20You have to throw your entire weight into it.
04:23And with this immense, straining effort, it moves maybe an inch.
04:27You just keep pushing.
04:29And hours later, you finally complete one full rotation.
04:33It feels like you've accomplished almost nothing for all that work.
04:36But here's the thing.
04:38You don't stop.
04:39You keep pushing, always in the same, consistent direction.
04:42Two turns.
04:43Then five.
04:44Then ten.
04:45The wheel groans forward,
04:47and you start to feel that first little whisper of momentum.
04:50Each push now is just a little bit easier than the last.
04:53You keep pushing.
04:54A hundred turns become a thousand.
04:56And then, something absolutely amazing happens.
05:00The flywheel's own heavyweight, which was your enemy at the start,
05:03is now your greatest ally.
05:05It starts to work for you.
05:07Each new push adds to the incredible cumulative force of all the pushes that came before.
05:12This is the power of a culture of discipline.
05:14And then, bam, breakthrough.
05:17The wheel is just flying forward, spinning with what feels like unstoppable momentum.
05:22Now, from the outside, it looks like an overnight sensation.
05:25But for you, on the inside, it just feels like the natural, inevitable result of all that consistent, disciplined pushing.
05:31There wasn't a single miracle push.
05:33They all mattered.
05:34So, you might be asking, how do all these ideas fit together?
05:38The key is, they aren't a checklist of things to do one after another.
05:42They're the individual pushes that get that flywheel turning and build that unstoppable momentum.
05:47Think of it like this.
05:49Each of those core concepts is a distinct push on that flywheel.
05:53The Level 5 leader provides the humble, determined will to start pushing in the first place.
05:58First Who gets the right, self-motivated people on board to push with you.
06:02Confronting the brutal facts means you're never hiding from reality,
06:05so you're always pushing in the right direction.
06:08And finally, a culture of discipline makes sure that everyone keeps pushing together,
06:12consistently, day in and day out, until you hit that incredible breakthrough.
06:17And that brings us to what might be the most important takeaway of all.
06:21Greatness isn't a matter of circumstance.
06:23It's not about being in the right industry or waiting for some savior CEO to show up.
06:26It is a conscious choice, and it's followed by immense, consistent discipline.
06:31The principles from good to great show us that the path is this organic buildup.
06:36It requires having the right people who are willing to confront the truth
06:40and relentlessly push a heavy flywheel, turn by turn.
06:44It's not glamorous, but it is exactly how greatness is built.
06:48So the final question really becomes, what flywheel are you pushing?
06:54We'll see you next time.
06:54So we'll try to win some review.
06:55You can look at some performance.
06:55And now we're going to do better interview.
06:55And then if you're going to butt if you need the silver lining updates.
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