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Good to Great

By Jim Collins

4 recommend/use · 4 sourced episodes

Every sourced reference

Short attributed excerpts only. Timestamps are approximate.

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Self-Mastery5 steps

Choose Your Abstraction Layer Deliberately

Delegate the work you don't enjoy to a higher abstraction; keep the parts that make you good and happy.

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Productivity4 steps

Commit Only to Dates Within Your Control

Roadmap the phase, not the feature: Discovery, then Solutioning, then Build, then a ship date.

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Strategy4 steps

Competitive Wargaming

Assign each squad one competitor for a quarter, then pool the intel on a presentation day.

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Self-Mastery5 steps

Conjecture-Driven Learning (Collecting and Connecting Dots)

Don't consume content — generate a conjecture, then hunt across every field for proof of it.

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Entrepreneurship5 steps

Four Paths Into Product Management

Two formal and two informal routes into PM — the informal ones convert most often.

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Communication4 steps

Have Backbone, Disagree and Commit

Dissent is an obligation, not a right — and commitment only starts once you've been genuinely heard.

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Strategy5 steps

Input Metrics Over Output Metrics

Stop managing the revenue number. Instrument the controllable customer-experience inputs that produce it.

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Sales4 steps

Match the Sales Hire to the Motion and the Buyer (PLG to SLG)

Layering sales onto PLG: hire growers for inbound and department-head buyers, not CIO hunters.

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Innovation4 steps

Problem-First AI Adoption

Start from the customer problem and ask where AI helps — never from 'what do we do with AI?'

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Strategy5 steps

Reading a Market Through ARPU and Profit Pools

ARPU is capped by per-capita income; a country's profit pools reveal what it actually values.

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Leadership5 steps

Single-Threaded Leadership

Kill resource contention by giving one leader one mission and every function they need to deliver it.

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Innovation5 steps

Structural Conditions for Innovation

Companies that say they tolerate failure but punish it in comp and career don't get innovation. Change the structure.

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Leadership5 steps

Take People With You Before You Fix Anything

A new leader's toolbox is worthless until the team agrees a problem exists — build the why first.

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Leadership4 steps

The Absurd-Scenario Interview (Screening for Second-Order Thinking)

Pose an impossible hypothetical and grade the chain of consequences, not the answer.

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Peak Performance5 steps

The Apex Survivor Model (Metabolism, Conversion, Adaptation)

Species that lasted 100M years share three traits — run your company on the same three.

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Leadership5 steps

The Bar Raiser Hiring Process

Put a trained, independent standard-keeper with veto power on every interview loop — and let them run the debrief.

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Innovation5 steps

The Delta 4 Framework

Score old vs new solution out of 10; if the efficiency gap isn't 4+, the product won't stick.

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Innovation6 steps

The Horizon-3 Research Team That Ships

Fund a 3-5 year research team, then bolt it to product so ideas actually reach production.

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Leadership5 steps

The Input-Metrics Stack for Developer Productivity

No single metric rules them all — combine per-component input metrics that ladder up to time-to-value.

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Strategy4 steps

The Low-Trust Market Playbook

In low-trust markets, trust concentrates — so focus becomes a curse and the super app wins.

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Leadership4 steps

The OPPA — Leaderless Peer Review of Problems and Opportunities

A recurring PM-only forum to spar on problems and opportunities — with the CPO deliberately absent.

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Leadership5 steps

The Three-Phase OKR Maturity Ladder

No OKRs, then siloed team OKRs, then company OKRs with cross-org dependency mapping.

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Leadership5 steps

The Values-Obedience 2x2 (Krishna, Rama, and Founder Dharma)

Plot leaders on values x obedience to see who creates, who sustains, and who must never be hired.

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Mindset5 steps

The Why School (Training Second-Order Thinking)

One 'why' question per meal, answered the next day — how second-order thinking gets built.

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Innovation5 steps

The Working Backwards PR/FAQ Process

Start every new product from the customer's problem, written as a press release, before any constraint enters the room.

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Innovation5 steps

The Zero-Ask Assistant (Copilot Design Philosophy)

If the user has to ask for it or wait for it, they won't adopt it — build assistance that infers.

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Strategy4 steps

Three-Horizon Resource Allocation Shift

Express multi-year strategy as a yearly percentage split of resources across three horizons.

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Strategy5 steps

Where-to-Play Product Strategy as the Prioritization Engine

Turn an integrated set of strategic choices into the filter that decides every roadmap trade-off.

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