Good to Great
Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
Jim Collins
“Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the very beginning. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?”
I feel like I’ve read this book before, but apparently I never reviewed it, so I read it again anyway. Good to Great is one of those business books that gets recommended constantly, and I can see why. It jumps straight into the content with very little fluff or unnecessary introduction, which I really liked. It doesn’t beat around the bush and gets into the ideas quickly. That said, I had mixed feelings about it overall.
One thing I struggled with was the company examples. Out of the 11 companies featured, I hadn’t heard of most of them or didn’t really know much about them. I assume that’s partly because they are American companies and many were probably huge in their time, but it still made parts of the book harder to connect with. To be fair, there’s probably not much the author could do about that if those were genuinely the top performing companies used in the research.
The book definitely has some good ideas and concepts throughout, and there were moments where I highlighted interesting points. But overall, a lot of it felt too generalist and abstract. Every company is unique, and at times the advice felt a bit too broad, almost like it avoided putting the dot on any “i”.
I also found the structure a little jumpy in places. The ideas were interesting, but sometimes it felt like the book moved around too much without going deeply enough into practical application.
Overall, not bad, but also not great. There are some valuable insights in it, especially if you enjoy leadership and business strategy books, but I personally found it a bit overrated compared to the hype around it. Overall 3 stars.
Think Faster, Talk Smarter
Lead Like a Coach
Order out of Chaos
I didn’t expect this book to be amazing, or to teach me brand new techniques on how to be confident. But I did expect it to be a bit more motivational, something that would actually get me in the mood to feel more confident in myself. I don’t think it really nailed that.
I was so excited to pick this one up, but unfortunately it ended up being a bit of a letdown. The book felt scattered and all over the place, without a strong through-line or clear point it was building toward. Each section felt quite segmented, and none of the ideas or stories were explored with much depth. Instead of developing concepts meaningfully, it jumped quickly from one example to the next, which made it hard to feel invested.
I went into Putting Stories to Work expecting practical, detailed examples of storytelling in action. Instead, the book gives very short “stories” that never really go anywhere or dive deep enough to be interesting or memorable.
I went into Breaking Twitter hoping for a sharp, insightful account of one of the most chaotic corporate takeovers in recent history. What I got instead was something far thinner, messier, and frankly exhausting.
This book promises to help you succeed in remote work, but honestly, it doesn’t deliver much that’s new or useful. The advice feels really basic and, frankly, outdated. The author talks about things like staying productive, keeping in touch with colleagues, and making the most of working from home, but let’s be real, that’s all pretty obvious at this point. It doesn’t really bring anything fresh to the table.
Zero to One promises a fresh perspective on building groundbreaking startups, especially coming from someone like the author, a Silicon Valley veteran. The book is visually appealing and I had high expectations, but unfortunately, I found the content somewhat underwhelming.
I really enjoyed this book and found it quite compulsive reading. The author has a smooth narrative style that provokes both ‘haha’ moments and deadly (haha) experiences. The format of essentially one major patient story per chapter worked well, even though it didn’t seem to be completely chronological. There were some small things in his educational journey that pushed him towards brain surgery, and then pediatric surgery. Working with children and their ‘plastic’ brains is fascinating, and I loved hearing about how sometimes it’s amazing the way children bounce back from surgeries.
I listened to this one as an audiobook, and honestly, it was fairly average. The author goes into an unnecessary amount of depth, describing and setting the scene for things that really don’t need it. It’s not a high energy book, and I found myself not caring about many of the little side groups of people we kept hearing from, especially at the start. A lot of that could have easily been edited out.