Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Good To Great
Good To Great
Walgreens
In 1975 Walgreens began to climb and climb and climb
Total: 28 companies
Good-to-Great: 11 companies
Direct Comparison: 11 companies
Unsustained Comparison: 6 companies
The Entire Study Set
Good-to-Great Companies Direct Companies
Abbott Upjohn
Circuit City Silo
Fannie Mae Great Western
Gillette Warner-Lambert
Kimberly-Clark Scott Paper
Kroger A&P
Nucor Bethlehem Steel
Philip Morris R. J. Reynolds
Pitney Bowes Addressograph
Walgreens Eckerd
Wells Fargo Bank of America
Unsustained Comparisons
Burroughs
Chrysler
Harris
Hasbro
Rubbermaid
Teledyne
PHASE 3: INSIDE THE BLACK BOX
1. Celebrity leaders
Big front men are actually negatively correlated with taking a
company from good to great. Comparison companies tried
outside CEO’s six times more often.
PHASE 3 Continued
2. Executive Compensation
No systematic pattern linking specific forms of executive
compensation to process of going from good to great.
3. Strategy
No intense planning or strategies to go from good to great
4. What to do
Focus on what to do AND what not to do
5. Technology
Can accelerate transformation but NOT cause one
PHASE 3 Continued
7. Employees
“Under the right conditions, the problem on commitment,
alignment, motivation, and change largely melt away” (p. 11)
8. Transformation
No name, tag line, or launch event to signify their transformation
9. Industry
“Greatness is not a function of circumstance.” Industry has no
bearing on a company going from good to great (p. 11)
PHASE 4: CHAOS TO CONCEPT
= The FLYWHEEL
(Captures the process of going
from good to great.)
THE FLYWHEEL: Disciplined People
Level 5 Leadership
“The good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars”
A Culture of Discipline
A combination of a culture of discipline and an ethic of
entrepreneurship you get GREAT PERFORMANCE
When there is disciplined people, you don’t need hierarchy
Disciplined thought, you don’t need bureaucracy
Disciplined action, you don’t need excessive controls
Technology Accelerators
The good-to-great companies never used technology as their
primary means of igniting a transformation
“Technology by itself is never a primary, root cause of either
greatness or decline” (p. 14)
THE FLYWHEEL Continued