1. Employment security. A guarantee of employment stating that no employee will be laid off for lack of work.

2. Selectivity in recruiting. Carefully selecting the right employees in the right way.

3. High wages. Wages that are higher than required by the market (i.e., than those paid by competitors).

4. Incentive pay. Allowing employees who are responsible for enhanced levels of performance and profitability to share in the benefits.

5. 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.

6. Information sharing. Providing employees with information about operations, productivity, and profitability.

7. Participation and empowerment. Encouraging the decentralization of decision making, broader worker participation, empowerment in controlling their own work process.

8. Teams and job redesign. The use of interdisciplinary teams that coordinate and monitor their own work.

9. Training and skill development. Providing workers with the skills necessary to do their jobs.

10. Cross-utilization and cross-training. Train people to perform several different tasks.

11. Symbolic egalitarianism. Equality of treatment among employees established by such actions as eliminating executive dining rooms and reserved parking spaces.

12. Wage compression. Reducing the size of the pay differences among employees.

13. Promotion from within. Filling job vacancies by promoting employees from jobs at lower organizational levels.

14. 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.

15. 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.