By Jeffrey Gangemi

Can a book about leadership affect someone's real-world business performance? Suzanne Shenkman, a student in the Washington University in the Olin School of Business Professional MBA program, might argue that a book can make a world of difference. Shenkman, who balances a full-time job and a startup business while studying for her MBA, learned about Jim Collins' book Good to Great (HarperBusiness, 2001) in her Strategic Consulting class, where she planned her personal career strategy as a great company would.

Later, as she developed a business plan for Suzanne Shenkman Designs, her own fashion-accessories company, Shenkman again used Good to Great ideas to set reachable long-term goals that fit with her passion for design. She even credits the book with helping her win $2,500 in the Olin Cup Competition, Washington University's business plan contest.

A short time later, in her day job as marketing & public relations manager at Barnes-Jewish St. Peters Hospital in St. Louis, the book again surfaced. The president of the hospital had bought copies of Good to Great for all executive staff to encourage the hospital's mission, which Shenkman says is "to be the best private hospital in St. Louis."

TIMELESS MODEL.  Stories like Shenkman's are becoming common at U.S. B-schools. In the five years since its release, Good to Great concepts -- especially the "Level Five" leader, who blends personal humility and professional will -- have been interpreted and reinterpreted on B-school campuses and beyond. Many of the book's catch phrases, such as "getting the right people on the bus," the "hedgehog concept," and "confronting the brutal facts," are now common campus lingo, and B-schools continue to use Good to Great to illuminate subjects ranging from corporate strategy to personal career development and leadership.

Among a growing list of books that professors recommend to their students, what makes Good to Great stand out? Compared to Jack Welch's Winning or Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, which are also bestsellers, proponents of Good to Great say it's uniquely able to influence the daily habits and decision making of its readers. They say its grounding in long-term research strives to create a timeless leadership model and a comprehensive set of lessons that apply directly to B-school students.

Good to Great "is the most significant book on leadership to appear in terms of moving how people think in the last decade," says Mike Useem, professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, who assigns the book to his students.

CHOSEN FEW.  It's also standing the test of time. Since its release in 2001, Good to Great continues to draw readers. Having sold well over two million copies so far, earlier this month it remained No. 10 on the New York Times best-seller list for business books, and it maintains the top spot on BusinessWeek's long-running bestseller list.

To respond to continued demand for the book's ideas, Collins released Good to Great and the Social Sectors, a 40-page, self-published follow-up to Good to Great, in November. It explains how to apply the original concepts to social-sector organizations with no measurable bottom line.

To research Good to Great, Collins, a former B-school professor who now runs his own management laboratory, and a team made up mostly of MBA students from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Leeds School of Business, spent five years identifying 11 companies, including Fannie Mae (FNM ), Gillette (owned by Procter & Gamble, PG ) and Kimberly-Clark (KMB ), that made that leap from competence to greatness, then teasing out their distinguishing attributes.

ANIMAL MAGNETISM.  The Level Five leadership model is perhaps the most groundbreaking part of the book. Collins and his team discovered that every company displayed such leadership, which he defines as a blend of personal humility and professional will, during pivotal transition years. Instead of introducing sweeping changes, Level Five leaders followed the "First Who" philosophy, making personnel changes to "get the right people on the bus and in the right seats, while getting the wrong people off the bus." Next, they confronted the "brutal facts" of their situation, especially their competitive position, while remaining positive.

Only then did the Level Five leaders initiate their "hedgehog concept," an understanding of what the company can be best at. (The term comes from a Greek aphorism: "The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.") In other words, a leader, as well as everyone within the organization, must believe in the "Three Circles" -- that they can: 1) be the best in the world at what they do, 2) maintain a great level of passion about the company and its mission, and 3) make their hedgehog concept economically viable over the long-term.

Executive MBA students, as well as mid-level managers enrolled in custom executive-education courses, take Good to Great and apply it directly to strategy within their organizations. Professors stress the book's storytelling skill in depicting real-life leadership challenges, especially within large companies. "Students can see 'Type Five' leaders within their organization, and they get a set of benchmarks against which they can improve their own leadership, as well as those around them," says Useem.

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