Good to Great

Name of the writer

Name of the institution

Good to Great and my work place

Introduction

Jim Collins was born in 1958 Colorado. He is an American business consultant as well as a lecturer on dealing with the growth and its sustainability in the businesses. He is the author of the book “Good to Great”, which deals with the situation why companies fail and why some companies achieve what they want to achieve (www.jimcollins.com).

Before writing this book, he and his team analyzed over 1000 companies and through this analyses the only thing that was considered was why and how these companies succeeded in achieving their goals and how these companies became “Great” from just being “Good”.

Discussion

During his research, Collins the companies that were considered as great were defined by having the following characteristics through their journey to Greatness.

The history of the company's profits and stock returns were up to or below average, then these companies were followed by a breakthrough that lead them to achieve higher profits and stock returns for over fifteen years. Through these characteristics and intensive research, Collins was able to identify the steps and ways through which companies can achieve their break through for success.

Following are the characteristics suggested by Collins in his book from “Good to Great” and how these characteristics imply to my work place which is the US Navy.

Leadership

Collins and his team suggested that the type of leadership in the workplace, matters most for the overall accomplishment of the organization objectives. If a leader is more autocratic, then the people around him will not be able to suggest him their queries or any other problems. His control and power may crush the motivation of the people working under him and so with low motivation the employees will not thrive to work hard for the benefit of the whole organization (Collins).

Collins categorized leaders into 5 levels, where level 5 leader being the best and leads to breakthrough in the organization. According to Collins, level 5 leaders consist of some of the following abilities and characteristics.

They produce extra ordinary results.

They are made leader from within the organization, and are not newly hired.

.Level 5 leaders never hesitate to take responsibilities when things are going badly, and are always giving credit to others when there is a success.

Level 5 leaders are always indulged in finding their successor for their success.

Here, in the U.S Navy, my leaders are mostly autocratic, they give orders to me and fellow marines obey them. Even though we are indulged in our day to day routines, our leaders keep us under their command and we have to accept every duty given to us. Our leaders definitely produced extra ordinary result in the line of war. They taught us well and in the line of our work their decision and planning helped us a lot which saved the life of many marines in the brink of war.

Other thing that I notice is that my leader is always looking for the right person in our group who can lead us momentarily when ...