吉姆·柯林斯：我想要告诉那些正在决定将来做什么、干哪份工作、去哪家公司的青年人，我要告诉他们这么问是不对的，他们该问的是：我想和谁一起工作。可能这份工作看上去一般，但会有很棒的同事。可能这份工作看上去很棒，却不一定有你希望共事的人。要选择人，而不是工作，尤其当你刚起步的时候，他们将会对你产生巨大的影响。就我自己的经验来说，我是非常非常幸运的，因为首先我在大学的时候自己开了家登山学校，这样就能支付我部份的学费，再加上我的奖学金就够了。我大学毕业后第一份真正的工作是在麦肯锡（McKinsey），那时我已经知道怎么样做分析、做经济建模等等。这不是我从麦肯锡得到的收获，我在那儿的收获是看到马文·鲍尔如何将公司发展壮大。我1980年进的公司，当时公司还处于发展阶段，他引入了一套价值体系来促进公司的发展。他靠自己的能力来建设公司。所有的同事在我22岁时帮助塑造了我的职业标准。我有时想，如果我在22岁的时候，去了一个没有职业标准的地方工作，情况又会如何呢？可能我永远也不会获得我在22岁时学到的职业道德。我的确是太幸运了，因为那时我完全懵懂无知，只是谋了份生计。如果时光倒退，要复制这份好运，那就要记住，寻找最优秀的人，而不一定是最好的工作。
Jim Collins: And I like to tell young people here who are trying to decide what to do, which job, which company. And my response is, it's the wrong question, it's who. There may be this job, but it's got great "who's." And there might be this great job, but not necessarily the who's you want. Go for the who's, the people, when you’re starting out especially; they're going to have the greatest impact on you. My own experience, I was very, very, very lucky, because my first, I ran my own climbing school in college, it's how I paid for college in part, along with scholarships, whatever. But, my first kind of real job, outside of college, was McKinsey & Company and I already knew how to do analysis and I could do economic modeling and all that. That's not what I got out of McKinsey, what I got out of McKinsey was, Marvin Bower had built the firm. I went there in 1980 and it was still in its real development stages, he had built the firm on a set of values. And on the caliber of a person. And so all the people that I immediately was working with shaped my professional standards at age 22. I sometimes think, what would have happened if I would have went to work at 22 in a place that didn't have professional standards? Maybe I would have never gotten that kind of professional ethic that I got when I was 22. That was a great stroke of luck because I didn't know what I was doing, I was just taking the job. If I could go back and say, I want to replicate that luck, it would be, where are we going to find the best people, not necessarily where you're going to find the best job.