47 L EVE L 5 + A "G ENIUS W I T H A M ANAGEMENT T EAM T HOUSAND H ELPERS " (Good-to-Great Companies) ( Comparison Companies) F I R S T W H O Get the right people on the bus. Build a superior executive team. Set a vision for whereto drive the bus. Develop a road map for driving the bus. Once you have the right people in place, figure out the best path to greatness. Enlist a crew of highly capable "helpers" to make the vision happen. strategy lay in the group dialogue and shared insights of the talented executive team. The "genius with a thousand helpers" model is particularly prevalent in the unsustained comparison companies. The most classic case comes from a man known as the Sphinx, Henry Singleton of Teledyne. Singleton grew upon a Texas ranch, with the childhood dream of becoming a great businessman in the model of the rugged individualist. Armed with a PhD. from MIT, he founded The name Teledyne derives from Greek and means "force applied at a distance 7 '-an apt name, as the central force holding the far-flung empire together was Henry Singleton himself. Through acquisitions, Singleton built the company from a small enterprise to number 293 on the Fortune 500 list in six Within ten years, he'd completed more than 100 acquisitions, eventually creating a far-flung enterprise with 130 profit centers in everything from exotic metals to Amazingly, the whole system worked, with Singleton
48 Jim Collins T ELEDYNE C ORPORATION A Classic "Genius with a Thousand Helpers" Ratio of Cumulative Stock Returns to General Market, January 1, 1967 January 1, 1996