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Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests.
James C. Collins
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James C. Collins
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: January 25
Author
Businessperson
Journalist
Writer
Boulder
Colorado
Understand
Institutions
Instinctively
Use
Smart
Dangers
Social
Danger
Advance
Self
Leader
Serving
People
Decision
Corporate
Interest
Interests
Whether
Management
Entrusting
Future
Leaders
Sectors
More quotes by James C. Collins
I've never found an important decision made by a great organization that was made at a point of unanimity. Significant decisions carry risks and inevitably some will oppose it. In these settings, the great legislative leader must be artful in handling uncomfortable decisions, and this requires rigor.
James C. Collins
Good-to-great companies set their goals and strategies based on understanding comparison companies set their goals and strategies based on bravado.
James C. Collins
Companies that change best over time know first and foremost what should not change.
James C. Collins
The greatest leaders build organizations that, in the end, don't need them.
James C. Collins
The critical question is not whether you'll have luck, but what you do with the luck that you get.
James C. Collins
Get keep right people.
James C. Collins
In a world of constant change, the fundamentals are more important than ever.
James C. Collins
If we allow the celebrity rock-star model of leadership to triumph, we will see the decline of corporations and institutions of all types. The twentieth century was a century of greatness, but we face the very real prospect that the next century will see very few enduring great institutions.
James C. Collins
Managing your problems can only make you good, whereas building your opportunities is the only way to become great.
James C. Collins
True leadership has people who follow when they have the freedom not to.
James C. Collins
Not one of the good-to-great companies focused obsessively on growth.
James C. Collins
Growth! is not a Hedgehog Concept. Rather, if you have the right Hedgehog Concept and make decisions relentlessly consistent with it, you will create such momentum that your main problem will not be how to grow, but how not to grow too fast.
James C. Collins
We must reject the idea... Well-intentioned, but dead wrong... That the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become more like a business. Most businesses... Like most of anything else in life... Fall somewhere between mediocre and good.
James C. Collins
It took Einstein ten years of groping through the fog to get the theory of special relativity, and he was a bright guy.
James C. Collins
Those who build and perpetuate mediocrity...are motivated more by the fear of being left behind.
James C. Collins
Just because a company falls doesn't invalidate what we can learn by studying that company when it was at its historical best.
James C. Collins
Genuine confidence is what launches you out of bed in the morning, and through your day with a spring in your step.
James C. Collins
The x factor of a great leader is humility combined with will.
James C. Collins
I see the Baldrige process as a powerful set of mechanisms for disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought and taking disciplined action to create great organizations that produce exceptional results.
James C. Collins
The most effective leaders of companies in transition are the quiet, unassuming people whose inner wiring is such that the worst circumstances bring out their best. They're unflappable, they're ready to die if they have to. But you can trust that, when bad things are happening, they will become clearheaded and focused.
James C. Collins
