Jim Collins
44 statements across 4 episodes · 20 bullish · 3 bearish · 2 people on the record · first statement Oct 1, 2019 by Jim Collins · said 23 times in 8 episodes since 2018 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Jim Collins's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Les Snead (10), Doug Conant (6), Jason Calacanis (2), Sarah Tavel (1), Justin Su'a (1), Joel Greenblatt (1), Dacher Keltner (1), Alfred Lin (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 11 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
2021 8 mentions in 3 episodes 3 per episode
2020 2 mentions in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Jim Collins, oldest first
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: Great organizations require superior results, distinctive impact, and lasting endurance
“The outputs are, how would you know if you'd become a great company? And I would say there are three outputs you have to have. One is superior results. If you don't win at the game you play, you're not great at it, right? And that would mean superior return on…”
Oct 1, 2019 neutral
Collins: Data shows 10X winners were not luckier than comparison companies
“And then, look at all that data, and what you find, what we found, is that If anything, the comparisons were luckier, but it wasn't strong enough to make that case, so we'll call it a wash. Essentially, if you wanted to argue that the ones who beat their compa…”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Collins: Built to Last companies showed greater endurance due to non-monetary purpose
“If you zoom way out and you ask which set of companies had greater endurance, now Built to Last was about Built to Last, but the Built to Last companies did. And I have to ask myself why. Because we're looking through different lenses, so you're still just try…”
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: Convert every 'what' decision into a 'who' decision
“One of my big takeaways from our research about decision making is try to change every what decision into a who decision. Not what should we do about this cybersecurity threat, but who should we have involved in it? Not what should we do about this investment …”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Collins: Investing in proven, scaling flywheels beats trying to predict nascent ones
“But I don't think you want to find a flywheel at only 10 turns. If it's a great flywheel, So maybe we'll talk in a minute about the Amazon flywheel, because that's what stimulated me further thinking about Amazon. Would it be so bad to pick up a flywheel when …”
Oct 1, 2019
Parrish: Pure rationality in every decision is unhealthy
“I think that there's a spectrum between emotional and rational. And at points on that spectrum where we're making a decision or we have a choice, we're faced with a situation in life, we need to know when rational is going to serve us and when it's going to ha…”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: Enduring companies did not have better data than failed peers
“The answer is we can find no evidence that they had that, or that they even necessarily had better analysis. So then you have to step back and say, well, it's not necessarily that they have better information. It's not necessarily that they had better data. It…”
Oct 1, 2019
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: Great organizations begin with brutal facts, not a vision
“One of the key things we learned in Good to Great was this notion of you don't start with a vision. You start with confronting the brutal facts. And this ability, this very stoic ability to just simply say, let's begin with the very best accounting of the brut…”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Collins: A true flywheel requires inexorable logic connecting each step
“A flywheel is not a
[4037] Jim Collins: A set of aspirations or action steps simply drawn as a circle so that you can say you have a flywheel.
[4045] Jim Collins: A flywheel is an understanding of the inexorable underlying logic that drives that momentum machi…”
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: Human cognition is not evolutionarily wired for probabilistic thinking
“Even people who've been trained in statistics and probability make probabilistic errors all the time, because for whatever evolutionary reason, we don't naturally think that way. And so, you can make the right decision and still have a bad outcome.”
Oct 1, 2019 negative
Oct 1, 2019
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: Durable business success results from compounding decisions over time
“What we found is that the most durable results happen as a series of good decisions that accumulate one upon another over a very long period of time that create a massive compounding effect. And just like investing, where it's buy quality assets you would pres…”
Oct 1, 2019 neutral
Collins: Failing on any single flywheel component stops the entire momentum machine
“The thing that will stop a flywheel is if you fail on any component, because on the one hand, while it is a compounding machine, each piece driving the next piece round and round and round.
[4132] Jim Collins: The other side of the coin, though, is that if you…”
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: Pilot projects must be executed excellently to achieve a clean test
“If you're going to fire a bullet, do it excellent. That way you know that if it doesn't hit, it's just not going to work. As opposed to, maybe it would have worked if you would have done it well. So if it's a bullet, you still have to bring the kind of excelle…”
Oct 1, 2019 negative
Collins: Reacting to failure without understanding triggers an organizational doom loop
“What happens as a company reacts without understanding. Oh my gosh, we had disappointing results. And often what happens is they panic. They look for a new direction, or a new program, or a new leader, or a new acquisition, or a new technology, or something. A…”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Collins: Great CEOs manage with a quarter-century horizon
“What I can say is that the great CEOs that we ever studied managed for the quarter century, and if you are not making decisions To hit a twenty-mile march for a quarter of a century, if you are not building a company, if you are just trying to build the flip o…”
Oct 1, 2019
Collins: A personal Hedgehog Concept requires passion, genetic encoding, and economic value
“I think individuals have hedgehogs as well as companies. So go back to the hedgehog and the idea of like, of understanding what you're really passionate about. And in the case of the personal hedgehog, what you're truly genetically encoded for. And then third …”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Collins: A company's second major cannonball usually becomes its biggest business
“What history shows is usually the second cannonball from a bullet to cannonball process on top of an existing flywheel becomes the biggest part of the company. Marriott started in restaurants, bullet to cannonball, hotels, right? Apple started in personal comp…”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Collins: Level 5 leadership blends personal humility with indomitable will
“One of the key insights from good to great was that 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 t…”
Oct 1, 2019 positive
Collins: 'Who luck' from influential mentors defines career trajectories
“One of the things I believe in is you get not just luck in life, but who luck, 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 s…”
Oct 1, 2019 neutral
Collins: People operate primarily on feelings rather than rational thoughts
“People do not operate first and foremost at the level of thoughts. They operate at the level of feelings. And you go into a discussion, or a negotiation, or a classroom, or, and you go at intellectual level, but that, the real level people are at is feelings.”
Oct 1, 2019
Oct 1, 2019 neutral
Collins: Bad luck can kill companies, but good luck cannot create greatness
“Luck is asymmetric as a cause. We cannot make the case of luck as the cause of a great company in any of our research. It's more of the flywheel effect over time, and return on luck, capitalizing on things, and cumulative, right? So good luck cannot cause a gr…”
Oct 1, 2019
May 4, 2021 positive
May 4, 2021 neutral
Collins: Built-to-last companies reinvest fuel while built-to-flip companies siphon it
“If you see that the point of the flywheel is to generate resources that get siphoned out of the flywheel, they're really the purposes to have that flywheel generate cash to other people to allow you to cash out, to sell the company to somebody else. That's sip…”
May 4, 2021 positive
May 4, 2021 positive
Collins: Effective flywheels convert world contribution into reinvestable fuel
“And if you really study the best flywheels, they have a different role. On the right-hand side of the flywheel, the 12 o'clock to six, Is really about what you do in the world, what you do to contribute, what you do that makes people's lives better, what you d…”
May 4, 2021
Collins: Perceived untrustworthiness usually stems from mistakes or incompetence, not malice
“One of the things that Bill always emphasized was that sometimes you don't know the whole story. He said sometimes it may not be ill intent. It could just simply be a misunderstanding, or it could be just incompetence, right? Somebody might not actually be unt…”
May 4, 2021 positive
Collins: Defaulting to trust in relationships yields far more upside than starting with mistrust
“He said, I've come to the conclusion when I think across the iterative relationships and interactions and aspects of life, that there is far more upside in an opening bid of trust. And there is far more downside in an opening bid of mistrust.”
May 4, 2021
Collins: Writing is easy to read because it is hard to write
“The only reason writing becomes, ah, easy to read is because it's hard to write. And writing is just hard. I think of writing as it's like running. If you're going to run your best, it's always gonna hurt. And so if you can run a five minute mile and then you …”
May 4, 2021 positive
Collins: Decision speed should depend on how much time before risks change
“What really Morton and I found in our research is the question is not fast decision or slow decision, you know, as sort of proxies for decisive or not. It's how much time before your risk changes, and then make your decision within that time frame.”
May 4, 2021 neutral
Collins: The most successful companies alter only 20% of their operating recipe
“One set of companies changes the recipe about 80% over, say, 30 years, and the other changes the recipe about 20%. Which group is the more successful companies? The 20% change. Which surprised us. We thought that what you would find is that the companies that …”
May 4, 2021 negative
Collins: History shows zero correlation between consensus and smart decisions
“Another big thing we learned is, near as I can tell, there is no correlation between consensus decisions and intelligent decisions. In the history of corporate history, most great decisions are taken where there's still substantial disagreement still in the ai…”
May 4, 2021 positive
Dec 21, 2021 positive
Jim Collins: In great relationships, both parties believe they benefit the most
“A really great relationship is one where if you ask each person independently who benefits more from the relationship, They would each say, well, I do. And he said, see, the reason both people can answer that way is because both people are putting into the rel…”
Dec 21, 2021 bullish
Jim Collins: Defaulting to trust attracts better people and improves behavior
“There is far more upside in an opening bid of trust than And there is far more downside in an opening bid of mistrust. It all goes to the question of people. If you really basically want to have your life, whether they be people in your company, whether they p…”
Feb 28, 2023 positive
Jim Collins: Leadership cannot be taught, but it can be learned
“I don't know if you can teach leadership, but I'm pretty sure you can learn it. And I think that distinction is key. I think it's very arrogant to say that you or I or anyone else could take someone and I'm going to teach you leadership. But I've watched peopl…”