Book review: Good to Great

I like looking outside education-directed sources for insights that may be useful in the classroom; and I've met some nice people recently who are CEOs of things and I was curious about what they do all day (it sounds like fun); so I spent some time this year in the business aisle at the library.

Until this year, I think the only book I'd read on business was Rav Dessler's Kuntres haChesed; and I still think if you're going to read one book on business that should be the one.

Anyway, I found two books that have good practical information -- Your Idea, Inc, which explains how to start a business; and the Nonprofit Kit for Dummies, which explains how to start a nonprofit - and the other interesting item was Good to Great, which is a study of what makes a corporation sustainable.

Most of the other books I found on business say, "Set your goal and pursue it aggressively!" but the Good to Great study found, it says, that the corporations that achieved lasting financial success are the ones that took a couple of years of experimentation to allow their ideas to gel; and then focused closely on what they found they could do well; and I think that rings truer.

Other factors mentioned are personal humility, and starting with having the right people rather than the right business plan ("get the right people on the bus, and then decide where you're going to drive it").

Something to think about.

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