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GOOD TO GREAT AND THE SOCIAL SECTORS: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great Jim Collins 35 pages (Boulder, Colo.: Jim Collins, 2005)
Five years ago Jim Collins published the hugely successful management book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't (GTG). He has recently published a 35-page addendum, Good to Great and the Social Sectors (GTG-SS).
GTG stands out among the myriad of management books because it is based on a coherent research design. Collins defines explicit criteria that define good-to-great companies, selects all companies meeting the criteria from a large sample of publicly traded companies, and finds a matched sample of companies in the same industries that are similarly good but fail to become great. The book then documents the differences between the two samples based on analysis of public documents, financial performance, and interviews.
This approach is a refreshingly sharp contrast from those taken by the typical management book. The lessons provided by these books are often simplistic and unfounded - like advising us that the key to being good at math is mastering multiplication. The problem with this should be obvious: One could just as easily make the same argument about addition, subtraction, or division. Does multiplication really matter more or is it simply necessary to do a number of things - including multiplication - well?
GTG is different because it tells us that for this sample, great companies have certain characteristics that merely good companies do not....