Good to Great; Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins is a book based on the 15,000 man hours contributed by the research team. The book sought to identify companies that made the leap from being a good company to being a great company. The companies considered to have made the leap to great had “cumulative stock returns 6.9 times the general market in the fifteen years following their transition” (p. 3). How could companies with long histories of being average suddenly become great? Good to Great is not a matter of accident, or luck, though top leaders will attribute much of their success to it. Good to Great is combination of level five leadership driving the company, first who… then what, confronting the brutal …show more content…
Effective leadership is the fourth step in leadership development. Effective leadership stimulate higher performance standards in pursuit of a vision. Level five leaders “build enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will” (p. 20). Leaders do not necessarily need to move through each step, they can be filled in later. However, a level five executive embodies all five of the layers in the hierarchy. Level five leaders are rare, Good to Great notes Abraham Lincoln as one of the only level five presidents in American history. Those who write about level five leaders continually use words such as humble, modest, gracious, and understated. Leaders from companies who did not make the leap form good to great are often shown in striking contrast. Lee Iacocca, who many have considered to be a top leader, a leader who saved Chrysler from the verge of catastrophe, completing one of the most celebrated turnarounds in business history, but he was not a level five leader. Lee Iacocca was a regular on talk shows, wrote numerous books, articles, and was a regular star of television commercials. Iacocca saved Chrysler from the brink, however,