The Big Idea: 

Chapter 1: Good is the Enemy of Great

• Good to Great companies always had Level 5 Leaders.
• Recruit the right people before choosing a direction/mission/vision/strategy.
• Confront the brutal truth and move forward anyways.
• Stick to your core.
• Create a culture of discipline.
• Use technology as an accelerator of existing greatness.
• Focus on small, continuous progress, not grand transformations.

Chapter 2: Level 5 Leadership

• Level 5 leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
• Level 5 leaders put their company and their team before themselves.
• Level 5 leaders are fanatical about results, not credit.
• Level 5 leaders come from within the company, not from outside.
• Level 5 leaders display workmanlike diligence, not celebrity charisma.

Chapter 3: First Who…Then What

• Hold out for the best talent.  Don’t lower your hiring standards.
• Hire slow, fire fast.  Then strive to zero turnover.
• Don’t rely on one genius leader.  Have lots of great minds on board.
• There is no right answer for how to structure executive compensation.  Just make sure it makes sense. The right people will deliver the best results, regardless of the compensation structure.
• You can create an environment that attracts the best people, but no compensation structure will turn poor performers into rock stars.
• Hire for attitude and character than for specific knowledge and skills.
• The best companies build great teams.  They don’t work their people to the bone.

Chapter 4: Confront the Brutal Facts

• Don’t be afraid to look at the brutal facts.
• Create a culture that embraces truth and honesty.
• Ask a lot of question and engage in open dialogue.
• When something doesn’t work, take responsibility, figure out why but don’t blame others.
• Pay attention to key metrics so you know early when something is wrong.
• Regardless of the situation, have unwavering faith that the team will find a way to succeed.
• The three circles are: what are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at?  What drives your economic engine?

Chapter 5: The Hedgehog Concept

• Focus on the essentials and ignore the rest.
• You will success if you can identify one simple concept that is good and execute it fanatically.
• Eg. Walgreens key metric: profit per customer visit; Wells Fargo had profit per employee; Fannie Mae had profit per unit of risk; Kroger had profit per local population.
• Everyone has strategic plans, but the good-to-great companies are more likely to be based around a simple idea.
• Three key questions that define the hedgehog concept: what are you deeply passionate about, what can you be the best in the world, what drives your economic engine?
• Don’t focus on mindless pursuit of growth. Focus on your core business, defined by your hedgehog concept.

Chapter 6: A Culture of Discipline

• Startups often fail because they hire too many new people, acquire too many new customers, launch too many new products.
• Things become too complex and problems start to surface.
• Fast-growing startups will hire professional managers to reign in the mess, but also kill the entrepreneurial spirit.
• Instead of installing bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, hire the right people in the first place.
• Avoid bureaucracy and hierarchy and instead create a culture of discipline.
• Build a culture around the idea of freedom and responsibility, within a framework.
• Fill that culture with self-disciplined people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to fulfill their responsibilities.
• Create a stop-doing list and focus on the hedgehog concept.
• Develop a system and manage the system.  Don’t manage the people.
• Culture beats great individual leadership.
• A culture of discipline prevents you from expanding outside of your core.
• A culture of discipline prevents you from an inflated overhead and layers of waste.

Chapter 7: Technology Accelerators

• Be selective about which technologies you adopt.
• Make sure your technology supports your hedgehog concept.
• Technology by itself is never the primary cause of success or failure.
• Reliance on technology can give you a false sense of invulnerability.

Chapter 8: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

• Success is an organic, cumulative process.  It never happens overnight.
• Success takes patience and discipline.
• Focus on continuous, incremental improvement, not miraculous transformations.
• Once there is visible progress, keep the momentum going.  It is infectious.

Chapter 9: From Good to Great to Built to Last

• The central concept of Built to Last: discover your core values and purpose beyond just making money (core ideology) and combine this with the dynamic of preserve the core/stimulate progress.
• Hewlett Packard started with “who” before ever deciding what they would build (“what”.)
• Walmart had taken 25 years to get to 38 stores, patiently defining their hedgehog concept.
• Profits and cash flow are like blood and water.  They are necessary for life, but they are not the purpose of living.
• Built To Last 1. Clock Building not Time Telling: culture and systems > single great leader/idea
• Built to Last 2. Genius of AND: purpose AND profit, continuity AND change
• Built to Last 3. Core Ideology: core values and purpose
• Built to Last 4. Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress: (except for core values) constant change, innovation, experimentation