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15.

Employment security. A guarantee of employment stating

that no employee will be laid off for lack of work.
Selectivity in recruiting. Carefully selecting the right
employees in the right way.
High wages. Wages that are higher than required by the
market (i.e., than those paid by competitors).
Incentive pay. Allowing employees who are responsible for
enhanced levels of performance and profitability to share in
the benefits.
Employee ownership. Giving the employees ownership
interests in the organization by providing them with such
things as shares of company stock and profit-sharing
programs.
Information sharing. Providing employees with information
about operations, productivity, and profitability.
Participation and empowerment. Encouraging the
decentralization of decision making, broader worker
participation, empowerment in controlling their own work
process.
Teams and job redesign. The use of interdisciplinary teams
that coordinate and monitor their own work.
Training and skill development. Providing workers with the
skills necessary to do their jobs.
Cross-utilization and cross-training. Train people to perform
several different tasks.
Symbolic egalitarianism. Equality of treatment among
employees established by such actions as eliminating
executive dining rooms and reserved parking spaces.
Wage compression. Reducing the size of the pay differences
among employees.
Promotion from within. Filling job vacancies by promoting
employees from jobs at lower organizational levels.
Long-term perspective. The organization must realize that
achieving competitive advantage through the workforce
takes time to accomplish, and thus a long-term perspective
is needed.
Measurement of practices. Organizations should measure
such things as employee attitudes, the success of various
programs and initiative, and employee performance levels.

Overarching philosophy. An underlying management

philosophy that connects the various individual practices into
a coherent whole.
16. Level 5 Leaders: During the transition years, all of the
companies were led by humble individuals who channel their
ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of
building a great company. It is not that Level 5 leaders have
no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly
ambitiousut their ambition is first and foremost for the
institution, not themselves. Ten out of eleven of those
profiled came up from inside the company whereas the
mediocre comparison companies turned to outsiders six
times more often.
17. First Who Then What: The good-to-great leaders began the
transformation by first getting the right people on the bus
(and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out
where to drive it. The comparison companies frequently
followed the "genius with a thousand helpers" model where
the leader sets a vision and then enlists a crew of highly
capable "helpers" to make the vision happen. This model
fails when the genius departs.
18. Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith): Create a
culture where people have a tremendous opportunity to be
heard, and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard. Leadership
begins with getting people to confront the brutal facts and to
act on the implications. Retain absolute faith that you can
and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.
19. Hedgehog Concept: See what is essential and ignore the
rest. Hedgehog companies understand what they can be the
best at, what they can feel passionate about and that is what
they focus on.
20. A Culture of Discipline: Good-to-great firms have a high ethic
of responsibility and a high culture of discipline. Get
disciplined people to engage in discipline thought and take

disciplined action.
21. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies avoid
technology fads and yet they become pioneers in the
application of carefully selected, relevant technologies.
The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Good-to-great companies
follow a pattern of buildup leading to breakthrough. They
accumulate successes and use the cumulative consistent
momentum to push them yet further out in front. There is no
dramatic, revolutionary event.