Good to Great

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't is a management book by James C. Collins that aims to describe how companies transition from being average companies to great companies and how companies can fail to make the transition. "Greatness" is defined as financial performance several multiples better than the market average over a sustained period of time. Collins finds the main factor for achieving the transition to be a narrow focusing of the company’s resources on their field of competence.

One of the keys that Good to Great showed was that Value Based Organisations (companies with ideals above just monetary goals) were the longest lasting companies.

These companies demonstrated over and again that human beings are driven by idealism and emotion and then create greatness within the framework of putting Meaning and Purpose into their work. Dr Tal Ben- Shahar the lecturer of Harvard Business School's most popular subject, Positive Psychology, states in his book "Happier" (McGraw Hill 2007) that there are two kinds of currency - Financial and Emotional currency. Companies that focus only on financial currency provide no meaning to their workers and therefore are doomed to fail. Human beings simply will not perform well for any length of time without meaning and purpose. Money creates a short term buzz but happiness is sustained through Pleasure, Meaning and Purpose. The focus by companies in the last 40 years on financial currency only may suggest why western worlds have never been richer in financial terms and yet never been poorer in happiness terms (the happiness rate of Americans has halved in the last fifty years whilst the standard of living has doubled).

"The days of creating and building Value Based Organisations where companies are built based around the Family Village Tribe structure and their people feel a sense of belonging and devotion from their leaders is coming. Those who have already grasped that concept (such as South West Airlines) are not only enjoying great financial rewards but also rewards of pride and belonging which every human heart craves" - Alan Peck, Director Positive Leadership, www.positiveleader.com