Good to Great by Jim Collins
Today, Amazon is one of the three largest companies in the world, but it wasn’t always like that. In early 2001, the company was four years old and had yet to report a profit. Then Jeff Bezos had an idea and picked up the phone.
On the other end of the line was Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... And Others Don't”. Collins listened to Bezos and decided to pay a visit to Amazon headquarters.
After Collins spoke to the company’s management team, Jeff decided to change the economic structure according to Collins’s advice.
In a podcast with Kara Swisher, Collins remembered that he told them to stop focusing on short-term gains and make long-term decisions – what he calls the "inexorable logic" of success.
"What a company spends its time doing should be concerned with developing and generating momentum," Collins explained.
Collins' work suggests that a company should focus on building one thing to drive another.
"If you can get the compound momentum out of your flywheel in a world that wants you to do something fast and overnight, it is enormously powerful," said Collins.
Indeed, the plan must have been very logical because it worked. The last quarter of 2001 was when Amazon first reported a profit.
With that knowledge built in, Bezos and his team at Amazon were able to make the necessary strategic changes in the business to establish their flywheel for success.
The lessons Amazon absorbed and that catapulted it to global domination are collected in the book. We don’t guarantee that after you read it, you will have a net worth of more than $182 billion, but we’re pretty sure you’ll have a better idea of how to build a healthy and thriving business.
