Good To Great

21 Jan 2012 6 Comments

by Ai Kanoh in Books, English Posts, Life, Work


Jim Collins’s Good To Great is one of the books the titles themselves are inspiring (which often means I haven’t read it yet). I love book titles. One of my hobbies is spending time in bookstores just checking around book cover designs, and evaluate the grade of titles, and imagine what is told inside, and learn something from them without reading.

I am deeply interested in copy writing which sell a new idea in the simplest way. Good book titles gives many ideas and insights in how to sell a book-long story, theory, or concept to readers without opening the book, and also the tone, font, and the design even gives you the idea whom it is talking to.

Speaking of Good To Great, I haven’t read it though fully, but basically the book talks about companies’ transformation from good to great, in terms of the business sucess, culture, ethics, and branding, etc, etc. But Whenever I go to a business management section in a book store, the red cover speaks to me personally, “Hey, are you just Good, or Great?”

When I find myself with full of lack and disabilities personally and professionally (which happens so often), I picture a dark forever-expanding cosmos or a tunnel with no end under the ground. Being extraordnally is something beyond imagination. After many years, I want to say I became wiser by ages, but I am not as confident as I was before, anymore. But maybe, though being great as a person is difficult, being great as a pair, as a group, and as an organization is possible. I may not be complete as one, but I may be able to fullfill a part of something Great, and Extraordinally.

I suppose I was too busy to enjoy myself and what I do, and I had never asked to myself if I am actually valuable for someone else; for family, company, friendship, or community, whatever bigger than me. In fact without me knowing so well about it, I am grown up, and expectations are changed .

If my 20th was the journey to find my self, my 30th is the journey to release what I found as myself to the air and go looking for something much more valuable than that. I am in back-and-force yet, but the life, work, and people somehow give me many oppotunities to challange myself to the limit. It asks me, “What’s your contribution more than being yourself?” I can’t answer that now, obviously. But I would be, if I can stay in the right track. I have at least 50 years more if  I am lucky. I want to be more brave and good person so I can travel through this phase successfully.