I Was Wrong

Jim Collins realized that leaders really do matter.

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t

When we were doing research for my third book, Good to Great, I was dubious of anything having to do with “leadership.”

I had long believed that if you observe a successful company over time, you find its success is not the result of a single leader. As extraordinary as Steve Jobs was, Apple has succeeded beyond him—meaning it’s ultimately about building a company that doesn’t depend on a single leader, right? The founders of our country understood that. So I was deeply skeptical of studying leadership at all.

But my research team revolted. They told me that, in studying the inflections of companies that went from “good” to “great,” it was clear the leader played a big role. I said, “Well, let’s go to our comparison companies that didn’t make it. Some have towering, charismatic leadership but didn’t make that good-to-great leap. Leadership is an irrelevant variable.”

Again, my team fought back, marshaling evidence and arguing that the critical element is the source of the leader’s ambition. Is that leader truly ambitious for the cause, and the company, and the work—not for him- or herself? That will show up in their actions, regardless of personality. Look at Anne Mulcahy of Xerox and Katharine Graham of The Washington Post. They have vastly different personalities, but both showed ambition for a bigger cause when taking over their companies during tough times. In the end, I’m happy to admit my team was right: Great leadership, in its many personality packages, matters a lot.