8. 8 - The Flywheel and the Doom Loop
  • Good-to-great transformations often look like dramatic, revolutionary events to those observing from the outside, but they feel like organic, cumulative processes to people on the inside. The confusion of end outcomes (dramatic results) with proces (organic and cumulative) skews our perception of what really works over the long haul.
  • No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop.  There was no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment.
  • Sustainable transformations follow a predictable pattern of buildup and breakthrough.  Like pushing on a giant, heavy flywheel, it takes a lot of effort to get the thing moving at all, but with persistent pushing in a consistent direction over a long periodi of time, the flywheel builds momentum, eventually hitting a point of breakthrough.
  • The comparison companies followed a different pattern, the doom loop.  Rather than accumulating momentum - turn by turn of the flywheel - they tried to skip buildup and jump immediately to breakthrough.  Then, with disappointing results, they'd lurch back and forth, failing to maintain a consistent direction.
  • The comparison companies frequently tried to create a breakthrough with large, misguided acquisitions.  The good-to- great companies, in contrast, principally used large acquisitions after breakthrough, to accelerate momentum in an already fast- spinning flywheel.
Unexpected Findings
  • Those inside the good-to-great companies were often unaware of the magnitude of their transformation at the time; only later, in retrospect, did it become clear.  They had no name, tag line, launch event or pgoram to signify what they were doing at the time.
  • Teh good-to-great leaders spent essentially no enery trying to "create alignment," "motivate the troops," or "manage change." Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely take care of themselves.  Alighment principally follows from results and momentum, not the other way around.
  • The short-term pressures of Wall Street were not inconsistent with following this model.  The flywheel effect is not in conflict with these pressures.  Indeed, it is the key to managing them.
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