吉姆·柯林斯：我想要告訴那些正在決定將來做什么、干哪份工作、去哪家公司的青年人，我要告訴他們這么問是不對的，他們該問的是：我想和誰一起工作。可能這份工作看上去一般，但會有很棒的同事。可能這份工作看上去很棒，卻不一定有你希望共事的人。要選擇人，而不是工作，尤其當你剛起步的時候，他們將會對你產生巨大的影響。就我自己的經驗來說，我是非常非常幸運的，因為首先我在大學的時候自己開了家登山學校，這樣就能支付我部份的學費，再加上我的獎學金就夠了。我大學畢業后第一份真正的工作是在麥肯錫（McKinsey），那時我已經知道怎么樣做分析、做經濟建模等等。這不是我從麥肯錫得到的收獲，我在那兒的收獲是看到馬文·鮑爾如何將公司發展壯大。我1980年進的公司，當時公司還處于發展階段，他引入了一套價值體系來促進公司的發展。他靠自己的能力來建設公司。所有的同事在我22歲時幫助塑造了我的職業標準。我有時想，如果我在22歲的時候，去了一個沒有職業標準的地方工作，情況又會如何呢？可能我永遠也不會獲得我在22歲時學到的職業道德。我的確是太幸運了，因為那時我完全懵懂無知，只是謀了份生計。如果時光倒退，要復制這份好運，那就要記住，尋找最優秀的人，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.