James C. Collins Quotes

Have a vision. Communicate it clearly. Pick the right people and put them in the right jobs.

I used to think business was 50 percent having the right people. Now I think it's 80 percent.

There's a time that may come in an organization where leading by influence is not enough. When things are not going the way they need to go, there's a time when one has to step up... to set the organization back on the right direction.

I have a great team who has helped me build Biocon, I was very fortunate to be able to share my vision with a group of people who really were as excited about challenges as I was.

There is no better way to manage than by walking around. Autocracy doesn't work. Talk to people in their offices, find out what's on their minds.

To build a great company, which is a CEO's job, sometimes you have to stand up against conventional wisdom.

A C.E.O.'s job is leadership, problem solving, and team building. I've done that my whole career.

You can't run a company simply by the numbers. So if you're going to bet on someone, you bet on someone you want to be in business with for a long time.

Turnaround or growth, it's getting your people focused on the goal that is still the job of leadership.

To me, success in the job is setting a vision, guiding an organization through change - which is exactly what I did at Digitas, and I'm very proud of that - and bringing people together and with you. That, to me, is what it takes to be successful.

Early in my career, I sometimes found it difficult to make the tough people decisions - I had to learn that. In business, you want to listen. You want to learn. You want to make sure you're not proceeding without information. But if you wait too long, you can actually hurt an organization even more.

The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.

Look first at management. That's the key to a company.

Challenges need to be given to an organization.

What I teach our people is that, as a leader, you have four key roles apart from people management. First is to champion the grand vision. Two, install systems and a culture to run experiments. The third thing is to savour surprises. The fourth thing is that even a leader's ideas need to be subjected to tests.

I am good at conceptualizing and building institutions.

There is a common and persistent belief out there that entrepreneurship is about creativity - that it's about having a great idea. But it's not, really. Entrepreneurship isn't about creativity. It's about organization-building - which, in turn, is about people.

Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.

At the end of the day, the team you build is the company you build.

Here's what management is about: Pick good people and set the right priorities.

Leadership is people taking the initiative, carrying things through, having ideas and the imagination to get something started, and exhibiting particular skills in different areas.

In a business, you've got to move on.

When you are a successful business person, you are only as good as your team. No one can do every deal alone.

Very often, we think of leadership being at the very top of an organisation. I think what's unique about ABG is that we have a very strong cadre of leaders across the organisation who are highly empowered and therefore play a very major role in the growth and evolution of the organization.

I can assure you we are all strong-willed, forceful personalities and the president encourages vigorous debate.