Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.
Interpretation
Great organizations are built by individuals driven by a passion for excellence, not just for external rewards.
In this quote, James C. Collins emphasizes that the distinction between good organizations and great ones lies in the mindset of their leaders and contributors. Those who drive the transformation are not merely seeking success or recognition; instead, they are fueled by an intrinsic desire for creativity and excellence, pursuing their ambitions for the fulfillment and joy it brings rather than for external validation or profit.
In practice
In a leadership seminar, one might quote Collins to inspire aspiring leaders about the importance of having a passion for excellence.
The kind of commitment I find among the best performers across virtually every field is a single-minded passion for what they do, an unwavering desire for excellence in the way they think and the way they work. Genuine confidence is what launches you out of bed in the morning, and through your day with a spring in your step.
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.
...the question, Why try for greatness? would seem almost tautological. If you're doing something you care that much about, and you believe in its purpose deeply enough, then it is impossible to imagine not trying to make it great. It's just a given.
Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats...
It may seem odd to talk about something as soft and fuzzy as "passion" as an integral part of a strategic framework. But throughout the good-to-great companies, passion became a key part of the Hedgehog Concept.
A visionary company doesn't simply balance between idealism and profitability: it seeks to be highly idealistic and highly profitable. A visionary company doesn't simply balance between preserving a tightly held core ideology and stimulating vigorous change and movement; it does both to an extreme.
Vision w/o execution is just hallucination. You need the right combination of visionary + team that can execute
A championship contender in the early twentieth century needed charisma and a knack for cultivating sponsorship, and Rubinstein was the epitome of the shy and unsocial chess player. Now matter how great his chess skills, he lacked the people skills to be a self-promoter and fund-raiser.
Attitude is the first quality that marks the successful man. If he has a positive attitude and is a positive thinker, who likes challenges and difficult situations, then he has half his success achieved.
To become the kind of person you want to become, you've got to have discipline. It's easier to keep to your standards 100 percent of the time versus 98 percent of the time.
A great restaurant doesn't distinguish itself by how few mistakes it makes but by how well they handle those mistakes.
What's the point if you make something that's not you, and you're successful? You have to perform it the rest of your life.
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