YouSaid · the spoken record

Jim Collins

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165
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2019-10-01
most recent
2019-10-01
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1
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  1. “So, first of all, the level five. I mentioned it earlier, the essence of the five is an answer to the question, what is the truth of your ambition? And then you essentially humble yourself to that ambition. You are in service to that ambition. And with an iron will to do whatever it takes to make good on that ambition. And so when you strip it away, obviously there's no way to climb inside somebody and measure it. But if you look at people's decisions and behaviors, you can kind of see essentially an answer to the question, in the end, is it really about what you're trying to get done and contribute and how you want to impact the world or to build something exquisite or to create a beautiful painting or a marvelous piece of music or whatever the thing is that you're working on is it about that? Or is it in the end really truly most about you, about what you get, about how you look, about what you garner, about how people think of you, right?”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “You really find in the research is that the greatest company builders often started as entrepreneurs. We could go through a whole list of them. And they grew into the ability to do that so that they could really become great company builders. That myth that there's an entrepreneur and there's a company builder and they're different animals is simply wrong. It's simply a matter of choice and you decide to become that. If there's a stark example of that, It's Steve Jobs 1.0 to Steve Jobs 2.0.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “And that the effort would go into how do I make this an enduring great company that then over time will continue to produce really great bicycles for the mind that will really unleash thousands and millions and billions of people's creativity. And that ambition that that's what it was about, and by the time he get to the end, he's still working on that, right? He still wants that to happen. And so I look at it as that it's a clear example of an arc of a journey. Steve Yobbs is not a success story. Steve Jobs is a growth story. And it also shows this idea that if you look at it, you have often this view that there's entrepreneur types and there's company builder types. And that once you run out of your kind of entrepreneurial competence, then you need to hand it over to the company builder type. And then they take it from there as if they're like different species.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “What's really interesting about the Ark of Steve Jobs is that I believe that before he was done, he had migrated to that full level five. He actually called me a couple of times in his very lately years and we're talking about the future of Apple. And what's so clear is that one, the experience of getting going through the wilderness actually did create a kind of humility that might have not been there before. The indomitable will never wavered, right? So you add that piece. But then what in the end was it about for Steve Jobs? It wasn't about Steve Jobs. He wanted Apple to be a great and lasting company, that its ultimate proof would be that it didn't need him.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “One of the key insights from good to great was the power of the level five over the level four. And the essence of the level five was this strange blend of kind of personal humility and indomitable will with ambition channeled into a cause that's bigger than you are, right? That that's what it's about. And that was different about the good great leaders and the comparisons. Well, people would often come back and say, well, what about Steve Jobs? Or can somebody grow into a level five? Or what if you're kind of a towering personality because a lot of the level fives were uncharismatic? They had charisma bypasses and so forth. They were often self-effacing and shy and so forth.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “One of the things that we've often been asked, and I've been asked a lot, is can somebody grow to become a level five leader? And the level five leader is an idea that came out of the good to great research, which essentially asks the question, can a good company become a great company? And if so, how, and how is it different than the comparison companies? And we have a research method behind everything that we do. But one of the really surprising findings from that research was that at those times of inflection as a company navigated itself from kind of mediocrity to outstanding performance, it lasted at least 15 years, that good to great inflection. We found that the companies that made that leap had what we call level five leaders and the companies that were their direct comparisons, same time, same industry, same opportunities, same resources or control set, had what we ended up calling level four leaders.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “As there was a Steve Jobs 1.0 and Steve Jobs 2.0. And most people only know the 1.0 because all the sort of immature behavior from when he was a young entrepreneur is sort of Steve Jobs 1.0. But then getting fired and then having to sort of grow from that and then to learn from people like Ed Catmull at Pixar and then how to come back as the seasoned much less in many ways interesting because it wasn't so strange. It was just really effective to come back as Steve Jobs 2.0 to redo Apple later. And that's the really key thing is that that journey from 1.0 to 2.0 1.0 couldn't have done what 2.0 did. I got to meet him right as he was beginning that journey, and it was an amazing thing to watch because it was so pure. It's unfiltered by what's to come.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Really clear to me this was a person who was never going to stop. He was utterly driven for the actual quest of the work, not what the work would bring. He had no idea if he'd ever kind of end up back to the stature he'd been before, when there was a gathering of, I think, the top 500 Silicon Valley leaders for a meeting, I believe it was with the president or something, but he didn't get an invitation. That's the wilderness. He is in the wilderness. And yet, if you just listened to that conversation that day, you wouldn't get that sense. It was all pointed forward, but he was also going through an evolution and a change. And one of the things that I think is a great message.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “One of the greatest wealth creation machines in all of human history and so on and so forth. But in 1988, He was flat on his back. And that's when you want to get to know someone. That's when you get a sense as to who and what somebody is, is when you see them then. And that's when I had the great privilege to meet him. So he kind of made a quip. Well, you realize I lost my company. And even in the session with my students that time, he just simply said, hey, I got booted out of my last company and just kind of, he could have been really bitter and angry. And I'm sure he felt hurt. I know that. But he channeled all of it. And so when he came to the class, he came in and he sat down cross-legged in front of the classroom and he said, so what do you want to talk about? And we had this like nearly two hour seminar on life and creating companies and creativity and what's next in the future of computing and how you think about putting teams together, all kinds of stuff. But when he's in the wilderness.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Yeah, so I think actually it's a really interesting place to begin the conversation because I think it really gets to how people grow. And I think there's a marvelous, marvelous set of lessons from his particular story. So you got to take it in that this is 1988. In 1988, it was only three years if my memory is right since he'd been fired from Apple, the company he founded, or essentially forced out, but essentially lost his own company. And he'd gone off to start this next thing called Next. And it wasn't yet becoming the next big thing. And he was in the wilderness. And one of the great strokes of good fortune in my life was to meet Steve Jobs not when he's the Steve Jobs that we know today. We all know that he came back to Apple. And then out of that came the iPod and the iPhone and the iPad.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Companies gave him the frame. I need somebody who knows a lot more than I do about this. You co founded Apple. Why don't you come down? And Steve, who was always very gracious in my experience.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “And replacing it with this is going to be a course on how to turn a new venture or small business into an enduring great company, period. And I looked at that and I thought, wow, I really don't know much about that, but that's the frame I wanted to challenge my students with. And it was really the beginning of what became 30 years of work up to today. And so as I was beginning to teach the course and prepare it, that launched me on a research arc, which I'm sure we'll get to. But early on, I thought, you know, I need to lend some weight to the course because I don't necessarily really know how do you take a startup and turn it into an enduring great company. And so I picked up the phone and I called Steve Jobs and I said, hey, you don't know who I am. I'm down here at the Stanford Business School teaching this course on them in the group.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “And I've had great huluk in my life. And huluk is when you come across somebody who changes your trajectory or invests in you, bets on you, gives you guidance at key points. So I had a great mentor named Bill Azir, who was a professor of mine when I was a graduate student at Stanford and who then went back for me with the deans to get me to teach this entrepreneurship and small business course. And so when I first got the course, I'm 30 years old and I somehow at the very beginning of the course changed its frame. And that leads me to why I ended up calling Steve Jobs. So I changed the frame. Originally, the original syllabus said something about this will be a course on the mechanics and challenges of the new venture entrepreneur and small business leader or something like that. And I ended up impulsively crossing out the first line of the syllabus.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “This off. Well, sure. And tell you what, actually, I'll begin there. And then as we kind of tilt back, I'd love to ask you a couple of questions, just things that have been provoked in my mind as I've enjoyed learning from the classroom that you've created with your marvelous guests of a couple things that occurred to me I'd love to ask you. The story with Steve Jobs. I had the great really privilege when I was only 30 years old to begin teaching a course on entrepreneurship and small business at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. And I had a great mentor. One of the things I believe in is you get not just luck in life, but Hulak. And a little bit later, by the way, I hope we circle back to the question of luck because we actually systematically studied and quantified its role in our research in one of our studies. And I think that we ought to hit that. But people think about luck as kind of what luck.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Here's the interesting thing about luck. Luck is asymmetric as a cause. Bad luck can kill you, but good luck cannot make you great.”

    2019-10-01 · The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish · #67 Jim Collins: Keeping the Flywheel in Motion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT