It is better to first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive
Jim Collins — but this is a paraphraseJim CollinsBorn 1958 · American business researcher, author of Good to Great
The idea and most of the words are Collins’s, from Good to Great (2001). The sentence is not. The book reports what its research found: “We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it.” The familiar “It is better to first get…” recasts that finding as advice, and a full-text search of scanned books finds it in no edition of the book ↗.
“It is better to first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive” Paraphrase of Jim Collins, not a direct quotation. What he wrote in Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001) is: “We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it.” The familiar “It is better to first get the right people on the bus…” is a later rewording. Traced by Quotle.info
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In context
Evoking the world of Jim Collins — American business researcher & author. Theme: "It is better to first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
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Provenance
What the book actually says
Work
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t
Published
HarperBusiness, New York · 2001
The book’s wording
“We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it.”
Status of the popular form
A paraphrase. It turns Collins’s report of what good-to-great leaders did into a general rule (“It is better to…”).
The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.
Jim Collins, Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001)
Look at the verbs. Collins describes what the leaders he studied did: they “first got” the right people, “then figured out” the route. The quote that circulates turns this into an instruction, “It is better to first get… and then figure out where to drive,” which the book does not say in those words.
Read the raw wikitext of the Wikiquote James C. Collins page ↗. It lists the popular sentence under Good to Great, 2001, with a citation of “p. 41” and no edition named.
Searched the book’s own phrasing with the same full-text search ↗. That returns about 109 results, including several 2001 scans of Good to Great showing “We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and…” and “No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus)…”
Confirmed the passage against the author’s own site. jimcollins.com’s “First Who” excerpt from the book ↗ reads “They first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.” A site search of Quote Investigator found no article on this line.
The wording this line comes from is in Good to Great, first published in 2001, well after the 1931 cutoff for US public domain, so it is in copyright. The paraphrase has no separate known author. Quote it with credit to Collins, and do not treat the book’s text as free to reproduce at length.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
How the finding became a maxim
The credit goes to the right person. What changed is the sentence: a researcher’s report of what successful leaders did became a neat piece of advice in words Collins did not print.
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What the book saysJim Collins, Good to Great (2001) Genuine — the documented wording
“We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it.” Several 2001 scans of the book show this wording in Open Library’s full-text search ↗.
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What circulates“It is better to first get the right people on the bus… and then figure out where to drive” Paraphrase
Wikiquote lists this sentence as sourced to Good to Great, “p. 41,” with no edition named (Wikiquote ↗). But a full-text search for it ↗ finds no scanned copy of the book, only a 2008 management title quoting it.
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In sportNick Saban Borrowed metaphor
The Alabama football coach set the goal of getting “the right guys on the bus” for spring practice. A 2019 post that quotes him ↗ points out that the analogy is Collins’s, from Good to Great, not Saban’s.
✓Credit Jim Collins for the idea, but quote what he actually wrote in Good to Great (2001): “they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it” (excerpt on jimcollins.com ↗).
Context
Why the bus stuck
“First Who, Then What” is one of the central ideas of Good to Great. Collins’s own summary ↗ says great organizations make sure they have “the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats” before deciding where to drive the bus. The finding surprised his team: they had expected good-to-great leaders to start by setting a new vision and strategy, and instead found that people came first.
Collins still tells it in different words when he speaks. SmartBrief’s 2016 report of a talk he gave ↗ at the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies convention quotes him as saying, “First you figure out if you’ve got all the right people on the bus, then you figure out where to drive.” Because so many versions exist, the tidy “It is better to…” sentence passes easily for a direct quotation.
First who, then what.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
James C. “Jim” Collins was born in Aurora, Colorado, in 1958, studied at Stanford, and joined the faculty of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 1988. He co-wrote Built to Last (1994) with Jerry I. Porras, then wrote Good to Great (2001), which introduced the “First Who, Then What” idea behind this line. Later books include How the Mighty Fall (2009) and Great by Choice (2011, with Morten T. Hansen).
For writers & researchers
Cite this
The primary source (Chicago)
Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t (New York: HarperBusiness, 2001): “We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it.” The popular “It is better to first get…” sentence is a later paraphrase of this passage.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is better to first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then figure out where to drive’?” Last verified 1 Nov 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-better-to-first-get-the-right-people-on-the-bus-the/