Jim Collins’ 3 Top Ten Lists

Ed Adkins — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:45:43 +0000

Need some inspiration? In the world of Business Management, few minds stand out like that of Jim Collins, author of the classics Good to Great, Built to Last, and most recently How the Mighty Fall. Through the years, countless business people, organization members, students and folks from all walks of life have sought to learn from Collins’ wisdom.

So, I figure, why not see what he likes to read?

Not only that, let’s see what his top ten book recommendations, class recommendations and task recommendations are for the rest of us. So here, I’ve collected 3 top ten lists that I found on the Growth Guy’s website and from GovernmentExecutive.com.

Jim Collins’ Top Ten Books

Jim Collins’ Top 10 To-Do List for Leaders

Download the free Good to Great diagnostic tool from JimCollins.com and use it as the basis for assessment, conversation and planning with your team.
Answer these questions for your organization: What are the key seats on our bus and are those seats filled with the right people?
Establish a personal board of directors for yourself. When you create your board, choose the members based on their characters, not their accomplishments.
Get young people (i.e. Gen Y’s) – the right ones – in your face.
Turn off your gadgets and create some regular white space for thinking.
Build a leadership council for your organization to engage in dialogue, debate and disagreement.
Check in on your questions to statements ratio and set a goal of doubling it in the next year. An early mentor to Collins observed that he seemed to be more interested in being interesting than being interested. That’s what caused Collins to focus on his own questions to statements ratio.
Start working on your stop doing list. (A good reason not to start trying to do all ten of these tips at once.)
Make sure that the core values and purpose of your organization are established early. It will be too late to do so when the tough times inevitably come.
Set your BHAG’s (Collins’ acronym for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) 10 to 15 years out based on your experience to date.

Jim Collins Top 10 Great Courses from The Teaching Company

How to Listen to and Understand Great Music by Robert Greenberg.
Great American Presidents
Argumentation – The Study of Effective Reasoning
What are the Chances? Probability Made Clear
Economic History of the United States, 1900 – 2000
Art Across the Ages
Dante’s Divine Comedy
Emperors of Rome
The History of Ancient Egypt
History of Modern Russia + From Yao to Mao – 5000 years of Chinese History

Jim Collins on How to Thrive in 2009

Ed Adkins — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:30:52 +0000

This April 15th newsletter contains nothing bout getting your taxes in on time. You can thank us later.

Recently, Jim Collins, renowned author of the classic business books Built to Last and Good to Great, was interviewed by Inc. Magazine and had some great advice for companies weathering the current financial crisis.

If you read the entire article, you may find that Collins has some potentially scary words for businesses in today’s climate. Collins spends a good deal of the interview discussing the similarities of the bursting of the tech bubble nearly 10 years ago, and says that we’re in for an era marked by turbulence.

Business People in this Crisis are Mountain Climbers

It hit me that we’re all heading up there, whether we like it or not. We’re heading into a world characterized by big events, big forces, massive storms. We’re going to be vulnerable little specks high on the mountain when the storm hits out of nowhere. And if we’re not prepared, we’re going to die up there. Or we’re going to be in real serious trouble.

But Collins doesn’t just speak of woe and trouble. His advice surrounds staying sharp and maintaining your skills in this ever-changing world of business. He may not be painting the rosiest picture of the economic future, but he’s far from pessimistic.

Stand Strong in the Face of Ambiguity

It is only in times like these that you get a chance to show your strength. In the end, I think we need to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us. And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us. It’s our ability to put those two contradictory ideas together: We need to be prepared for what we can’t predict and, at the same time, have this total, unwavering faith that we will find a way to deal with all of it. And I believe we will. I don’t believe the world will treat us well, but we will figure out how to do very well.

Right now, everyone could use some of Collins’ quoted “unwavering faith.” If you are staring into the rest of 2009 and beginning do doubt your organization’s ability to ride it out, take a minute to check whether it’s just that realistic paranoia that he says we should all have, or whether you need a dose of faith. If you find that’s the case, we always say that good strategic planning is a great source of faith! The entire article can be found at Inc.com.

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