Great by Choice

The third of Collins’s matched-pair research books, this one restricted to companies that grew through genuinely turbulent decades while comparison companies in the same conditions did not. The behaviours it names are fanatic discipline, empirical creativity and productive paranoia, expressed operationally as marching a consistent distance every year rather than sprinting when conditions allow, and firing small calibrating shots before committing capital. On luck, the finding is that the winners did not get more of it; what differed was what they did with what they got.

Why it’s on the list: In the required section of Fil Arons’s list, and the Collins volume most directly about operating under conditions you do not control.

Where I saw it: @FilArons’s November 16, 2025 recommended-reading list, in the section he marks as required.

Connections

• Good to Great — the earlier book in the same research program.
• Built to Last — the first, on durability rather than turbulence.
• Luck — the concept this book tries to make analytically usable rather than dismiss.
• Company Building — the practice the findings are aimed at.