Those who turn good organizations into great organizations are motivated by a deep creative urge and an inner compulsion for sheer unadulterated excellence for its own sake.

Be rigorous about your HR decisions. There is a difference between rigorous and ruthless.

If we only have great companies, we will merely have a prosperous society, not a great one. Economic growth and power are the means, not the definition, of a great nation.

Whether you prevail or fail depends more on what you do to yourself than on what the world does to you.

In an ironic twist, I now see Good to Great not as a sequel to Built to Last, but more of a prequel. Good to Great is about how to turn a good organization into one that produces sustained great results. Built to Last is about how you take a company with great results and turn it into an enduring great company of iconic stature.

I am not failing - I am growing! Do you have the ability to reframe failure as growth in order to achieve your goals?

Good is the enemy of great.