Companies that make profit maximization their priority don't perform as well as firms that live up to the core values of their founders. Those who put their companies first, rather than themselves, are more likely to thrive. Chief executives don't have to be charismatic to succeed. He spins out reassuring truisms: Companies should set especially ambitious goals. In an era when business managers are tormented by corner-office scandals, the bear market, the war and fears of terrorism, his proclamations are a kind of comfort food. Yet at first glance, Collins' sage advice seems to offer not so much insight as a blinding glimpse of the obvious. Collins earns $3 million a year for his half-day 'labs' (at $20,000 a shot) and 45-minute speeches ($45,000). His adoring clients include McDonald's, Coors Brewing,, the venture wizards at Kleiner Perkins and, oddly enough, the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra. (a friend bought the schoolhouse and converted it into rented office space), is so popular now he accepts only 1 in 25 prospective assignments. His second, Good to Great, has also sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, and is now climbing back up the bestseller charts-18 months after its debut.Ĭollins, a cranky lone wolf who operates out of the first-grade classroom he attended as a boy in Boulder, Colo. His first bestseller, Built to Last, published in 1994, has sold more than 1 million copies.

And now James Collins is the flavor of the moment.

Peter Drucker has made a 50-year career of it author Thomas Peters became a 1980s superstar with his tome In Search of Excellence. The hottest management consultant in the nation is a 45-year-old rock-climbing professor who fled the faculty of Stanford Business School, wrote two business bestsellers and now commands $1,000 a minute for a simple 45-minute speech.Īmerican chief executives, it seems, love few things more than the advice of a bright, sterling-tongued management guru who tells them how to excel in business-even though he hasn't ever really run a company himself.

Instaling Good to Great