[2 MIN REVIEW] Turning the Flywheel by Jim Collins
Full Title: Turning the Flywheel a Monograph to Accompany his book Good to Great
Although I have not yet read “Good to great”, I was encouraged to read this very short book during a recent strategy meeting where we were looking to refine and focus my companies key drivers.
The Flywheel effect in this context is defined by Jim Collins as:
“The Flywheel effect is a concept developed in the book Good to Great. … Picture a huge, heavy flywheel — a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds.” (1)
You can see an example of a Flywheel in the title image of the post. (2) The base idea behind it is you highlight key “components” in the business that feed into each other and create momentum. Obviously the Flywheel is cyclic meaning it continues in an infinite loop, successful effort expelled on any one of the components will help build momentum into the next.
A few key takeaways which I found valuable:
- identifying 5–6 key “components” the business should focus on through reflecting on pass success and failures. The important part being that these components should feed into the next (ie clockwise around a circle), there by building momentum hence the flywheel analogy
- The above components are derived by listing your successes and failures and comparing them, ie what made the successes successful, similarly what was the attributes that made the failures.
- Fire “bullets” to calibrate your investment of effort then fire a cannon ball once you have measured success to invest more heavily
This isn’t a new concept but I am have been hearing the term Flywheel a lot more lately so worth getting across it.
Audible version:
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