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The Flywheel as a Concept
In Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t” By Jim Collins, Collins completes his thesis for Greatness with the Flywheel and Doom Loop concepts.
Good-to-Great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel to build up momentum until a point of breakthrough.
The Flywheel is the overall accumulation of effort applied in a consistent manner, with technology accelerators, towards the hedgehog concept by the disciplined people which the Level 5 leader has recruited. (It’s all coming together now)
Apparently a Flywheel was used in early motors to help balance power input/output as well as compensate for angular momentum on crankshafts. Basically, mechanical capacitors. For years, I pictured a gyroscope which is similar but different.
“Greatness" is defined by Collins as a company that achieves financial performance several multiples better than the market average, over a sustained period”
The Flywheel
Attributes and Observations
The Flywheel is not about the magic of compounding returns or keeping a reserve of energy ready to pounce when opportunity strikes.
It’s about the down and dirty work of consistently expending a bit of energy each day towards a goal.
Get up each morning — ready to do the work ahead
Know what you need to get done towards the goal
Get the daily critical items done
Get them done well.
Go to sleep —- so you can wake up and do it all over again tomorrow
While the world ignores your routine and mild mannered nature, you are growing, developing and incubating towards greatness in your organization. Over time, you’ll suddenly and without warning be among the elite all the while just running your routine and mild mannered nature.
From the outside, they look like dramatic, almost revolutionary breakthroughs. But from the inside, they feel completely different, more like an organic development process — Jim Collins
The Doom Loop is the polar opposite of the Flywheel. It’s what makes companies and organizations fall apart quickly. It’s often the rumbling Thunder following a Lightning Bolt of disruption at the top of the company. A few examples include:
A founder leaves and a new CEO steps in
A whistleblower exposes a scandal
A mega merger gone wrong
The Flywheel as a Dad
Attributes and Observations
The same Flywheel mentality applies to raising kids well. It’s about the down and dirty work of consistently expending a bit of energy each day towards their well being and growth.
Get up each morning — ready to do the work ahead
Know what you need to get done towards the goal
Get the daily critical items done
Get them done well.
Go to sleep —- so you can wake up and do it all over again tomorrow
The Flywheel of parenting is the grind of things like insisting on a healthy snack over junk food for the 586th time or enforcing the bedtime routine every goddamn night. It’s not one great parenting moment but the 1000s of small moments from grinding it out every day that drives greatness.
Thanks for reading Trader Dads! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Technology Accelerators as a Concept In Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t” By Jim Collins, Collins closes out his thoughts on Disciplined Action by providing thoughts on technology uses in an organization.
