Book Review: Good to Great

"Few people attain great lives because in large part it is just so easy to settle for a good life.
Jim Collins

Any book that starts out with the author finishing the manuscript and then heading off to the mountains for a run, is guaranteed in my book for at least a couple of chapters. While Good to Great is widely regarded as a book strictly dealing in the art of business and management, I found it to be equally as applicable to one's own journey in life.

Collins makes the point several times throughout that you do no simply go from good to great in an instant. Becoming a better business, leader, father, educator, or athlete is the result of a cumulative process. Step by step, action by action, and decision by decision. That is how you build the foundation and the path for greatness.

However, those steps alone do not ensure success. Are you passionate about what you are doing? Have you surrounded yourself with the best people? Are you putting into practice, disciplined people, discipline thought, and disciplined action? Without those things while you might achieve some measure of success, you will never have a sustained level of success or be in the position to be great.

As an educator, I thoroughly enjoyed the book because I firmly believe that the education world can learn so much from the world of business if they are willing to look at the big picture. This ideology while learned during my masters work, has taken some time for me to digest and begin to put into practical applications daily as an administrator. Personally, the ideas found in the book to be relevant as I train to run the Double Blue Ridge Marathon. Step by step, action by action.

In the end, the message I took away was simple yet powerful: Focus on doing the right things and doing them well.