I wrote my latest monograph, Turning the Flywheel, to share new and practical insights about the flywheel principle, inspired by its wide-ranging impact in recent years. At one end of the spectrum there are fast-growing companies like Amazon, which has consciously harnessed the flywheel effect to feed its momentum machine. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the delightful discovery of a rural Kansas public elementary school using the flywheel to elevate the learning of children.| www.jimcollins.com
I had a professor in graduate school who walked in on the first day of class and wrote on the chalkboard: “The best students are those who never quite believe their professors.” Those who think for themselves—those who do not take anyone‘s word as infallible just because of their supposed authority—inevitably get the most out of their learning. | www.jimcollins.com
In Autumn 2004, I received a phone call from Frances Hesselbein, founding president of the Leader to Leader Institute.| www.jimcollins.com
The following are short excerpts from the monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer, published in 2005 by Jim Collins.| www.jimcollins.com
When Bill Lazier and I wrote the original edition of Beyond Entrepreneurship, based on the course we taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, we set out to create a road map for leaders in a small business or mid-sized enterprise who want to build an enduring great company.| www.jimcollins.com
We cannot predict the future. But we can create it.| www.jimcollins.com
In a world of constant change, the | www.jimcollins.com
contactaboutservices| www.jimcollins.com
The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse. This is one of the key reasons why less charismatic leaders often produce better long-term results than their more charismatic counterparts. | www.jimcollins.com
“I developed our business model on the idea of creating an | www.jimcollins.com
The good-to-great executives were all cut from the same cloth. It didn’t matter whether the company was consumer or industrial, in crisis or steady state, offered services or products. It didn’t matter when the transition took place or how big the company. All the good-to-great companies had Level 5 leadership at the time of transition. Furthermore, the absence of Level 5 leadership showed up as a consistent pattern in the comparison companies. Given that Level 5 leadership cuts against t...| www.jimcollins.com
GOOD TO GREAT| www.jimcollins.com
Start with 1,435 good | www.jimcollins.com
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. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. | www.jimcollins.com
Are you a hedgehog or a fox? | www.jimcollins.com
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. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing and, after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep p...| www.jimcollins.com