How to build an Enduring Great 10X Company: Self-Discipline

How to build an Enduring Great 10X Company: Self-Discipline

(10X: 10 times successful than industry average) 

Collection of best ideas from Jim Colins’ best sellers (10 million+ copies sold): Built to Last; Good to Great; How the Mighty Fall; Great by Choice

1.      Cultivate Level 5 Leadership

o  Don’t sweat about Charisma

o  Combination of personal humility (subjugation of personal ego to a serving a cause beyond oneself) and indomitable will (fierce resolve to do whatever it takes to best serve the cause).

o  Incredibly ambitious but channel their ambition into building a great team or organization to accomplish a shared mission – not about themselves. Ensuring that the organization endures beyond themselves

o  Motivate people through inspired standards and not through inspiring personality

o  A great company has a Level 5 leadership pipeline spread throughout the organization.

2.      Get the Right People on the Bus

o  Think First about Who and then about What

o  Get the Right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus & then figure out where to drive the bus

o  Packard’s (HP founder) Law – No company can grow faster than its ability to get enough of the right people

o  The number one KPI is the % of key seats filled with right people

o  When future is uncertain your best strategy is to have a busload of Disciplined people who can adapt and perform brilliantly no matter what comes next.

3.      Embrace the Genius of AND

o  Be comfortable with Paradox. The test of intelligence is to hold two opposite ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function

o  Tyranny of the OR – pushes people to believe that things must be either A or B

o  Undisciplined thinkers force debates into stark Tyranny of the OR choices; while disciplined thinkers expand the conversation to create Genius of the AND solutions.

o  For example: Creativity & Discipline; Innovation & Execution; Humility & Audacity; Freedom & Responsibility; Cost & Quality; Short-term & Long-term; Prudence & Courage; Analysis & Action; Idealistic & Pragmatic; Continuity & Change; Realistic & Visionary; Values & Results; Purpose & Profit.

o  Middle of the road ????? ???

4.      Stockdale Paradox – Confront the brutal facts

o  Admiral Stockdale was the highest-ranking US Naval officer held as POW for 7 years. He found that prisoners who were optimistic died heart broken

o  Retain unwavering faith that you can and must prevail in the end, regardless of difficulties

o  Confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

o  Don’t create false hopes soon to be destroyed by events

o  Create a climate where truth is heard

5.      Clarify a Hedgehog concept (?????? - kharpusht) for disciplined decision making

o  A fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Fox tries many things to catch the hedgehog, but it always saves itself by using the same strategy - using its pointed exterior to protect itself.

o  There are two types of thinkers in the world: foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes embrace the inherent complexity of the world and pursue many ideas, never giving themselves over to single pursuit. Hedgehogs gravitate towards simplicity and think in terms of a single organizing big idea that guides everything

o  Understand the intersection of three circles (a) what you are deeply passionate about, (b) what you can be best in the world at, and (c) what best drives your economic engine.

o  Once your become fanatically discipled in making decisions consistent with the three circles, you begin to generate momentum

o  This includes the discipline of what to do but equally what not to do and what to stop doing

6.      Build Momentum by Turning the Flywheel

o  Building a great enterprise never happens in one fell swoop. There is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no miracle moment.

o  The process resembles pushing a giant heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of break-through.

o  Push with great effort, one inch at a time. Keep pushing and as flywheel completes one turn, then another, and it builds momentum.

o  Once you understand how to create flywheel momentum in your organization and then apply the understanding with creativity and discipline. A series of small wins will get you unstoppable momentum.

7.      Achieve Breakthrough with 20-Mile Discipline

o  It is like walking a gigantic country by hitting a minimum of 20 miles each day. And you stay on the march regardless of weather, tiredness, or unpleasant surroundings.

o  To achieve breakthrough momentum, you need to execute with fanatic discipline on every component.

o  Set forth a standard of performance to hit with relentless consistency – consecutive consistency

o  It achieves a beautiful Genius of the And with the discipline of short-term performance AND long-term building. You must hit the march this cycle and every subsequent cycle for years to decades.

8.      Renew & Extend via Fire Bullets, Then Cannonballs

o  You have limited gun powder. You take all of it to fire a cannon ball and it misses, you are in trouble.

o  Instead take a little gun powder to make a bullet and fire it. You see how far it misses to correct your subsequent bullets. Once you hit target, you take all remaining gun powder to fire a big cannon ball to sink the enemy.

o  Calibrated cannon balls correlate with outsized results rather than disaster.

o  The ability to scale innovation – to turn small proven ideas (bullets) into huge successes (cannon balls) provides the momentum.

9.      Practice Productive Paranoia (Avoid the 5 stages of Decline)

o  Every company is vulnerable to decline. First step to sustainability is don’t die – you can only learn from mistakes that you survive.

o  Anyone can fall and most eventually do

o  Survivors maintain hyper vigilance in good and bad times

o  Lever 5 Leaders assume that conditions can unexpectedly change. They constantly ask What if?, What if? What if?

o  Prepare ahead of time, building reserves, preserving a marking of safely, honing in discipline in good times

o  Stages of Decline are – Hubris Born of Success, Undisciplined pursuit of More, Denial of Risk and Peril, Grasping for Salvation and Capitulation to the irrelevant.

10.  Do more Clock Building, Less Time Telling

o  Time Telling is a Charismatic Visionary (genius with a thousand helpers) and single great idea to build upon success.

o  Clock Building is Shaping a culture that can thrive beyond any single leader and building an organization that can generate many great ideas

o  Clock Builders create replicable recipes, extensive training programs, leadership-development pipelines, and tangible mechanisms to enforce core values.

o  Get the right people on the bus and manage the system not the people.

o  Real success is when next generation of leadership further increases momentum. 

11.  Achieve your BHAG - Preserve the Core/Stimulate Progress

o  BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is the mountain that you are trying to climb. This stimulates progress.

o  Once BHAG is achieved, you set your sight on the guiding star (your purpose) and pick yet another mountain (another BHAG) to climb.

o  Through out the entire process, remain true to your core values.

12.  10X Multiplier – Return on Luck

o  Great companies are not luckier. They get a higher return on luck on a good-luck event. This gives them momentum

o  You must be prepared to absorb a bad-luck event.

o  Luck is when you did not cause it, it has significant consequence, and an element of surprise

o  50% of great leadership is what you do with the unexpected.

o  Luck does not build companies, people do

o  Luck favors the persistent.