Flywheel Concept
The flywheel concept is a business strategy that was popularized by Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great.” The basic idea was that great businesses execute small daily actions on critical processes to get the flywheel turning, and then achieve breakthrough results when the momentum of the wheel supports itself with very little incremental input required.
The flywheel represents the business as a whole, and the process that is being improved represents the “heavy lifting” that needs to be done to get the business moving. The key to the flywheel concept is that it requires a lot of hard work and persistence to get started, but once the flywheel is spinning, results add up on top of each other, momentum begins to build and the business starts to see massive results with very incremental input. The emphasis is on the importance of consistency and sustained effort in achieving breakthrough results.
Now Imagine your life as a big flywheel, specially your professional life.
When you’re starting out, the wheel sits still. It’s big, scary, and intimidating!
Your first tasks are to (a) determine what will get it moving and (b) execute consistently to get it moving.
Once it’s in motion, your task fundamentally changes.
Now you need to prioritize the most efficient deployment of incremental energy. One push at a sub-optimal angle will slow down the flywheel—it will hurt the momentum. You don’t want to do that. You need to be sure that every incremental unit of energy you deploy is extremely purposeful.
Thinking about the most important factors in each stage:
- Stage 1—Get Moving: Experimentation (figure out what works), force (intensity), time (consistency).
- Stage 2—Keep Moving: Angle (double down on what works), force (intensity), time (consistency).
In other words, when you’re getting started, you need to try a lot of things, say yes to a lot of opportunities to figure out what works and what doesn’t. But once you get it rolling, you just need to do a few things with extreme precision, be selective about where you put your energy into. Saying no at this stage lets you eliminate the noise and double down on the actions that compound most effectively in your life.
