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we found no consistent pattern in the backgrounds of 10Xers relative to the comparison leaders.
some of the 10Xers evolved, developing their leadership capabilities over time.
get to work learning and applying the practical lessons of how 10Xers lead, building a truly great organization that delivers superior results, makes a distinctive impact, and achieves lasting endurance.
True discipline requires mental independence, and an ability to remain consistent in the face of herd instinct and social pressures.
Productive paranoia enables creative action.
You keep the pace, 20 miles a day.
You keep up the effort—20 miles, 20 miles, 20 miles—
You sustain your pace, marching 20 miles.
a 20 Mile March company.
John Brown became CEO of Stryker in 1977, he deliberately set a performance benchmark to drive consistent progress:
Stryker hit its 20 Mile March goal more than 90 percent of the time.
Stryker had an equally important self-imposed constraint: to never go too far,
to never grow too much in a s...
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Brown, however, consciously chose to maintain the 20 Mile March, regardless of criticism urging him to grow Stryker at a faster pace in boom years.
you need both parts of a 20 Mile March: a lower bound and an upper bound,
the ambition to achieve and the self-control to hold back.
The 10X cases exemplified what we came to call the 20 Mile March concept, hitting stepwise performance markers with great consistency over a long period of time,
Long term mind set
It’s about having concrete, clear, intelligent, and rigorously pursued performance mechanisms that keep you on track.
I.e. Objectives, measures, and a process
(1) the discomfort of unwavering commitment to high performance in difficult conditions, and (2) the discomfort of holding back in good conditions.
Southwest had the discipline to hold back in good times so as not to extend beyond its ability to preserve profitability and the Southwest culture.
Anyone who said they’d be profitable every year for nearly
three decades in the airline business—the airline business!—would be laughed at.
Here also we have a publicly traded company willing to leave growth on the table.
What's the empirical creativity behind this contrarian decision? What have kelleher the confidence in this risk?
every 10X company exemplified the 20 Mile March principle during the era we studied.
Some comparisons showed no 20 Mile Marching during their worst years, only to regain ground when they finally became 20 Mile Marchers,
Other comparison companies, such as PSA and Safeco, 20 Mile Marched in their early years, when they produced their best results, then later fell behind when they lost discipline.
A good 20 Mile March uses performance markers that delineate a lower bound of acceptable achievement.
must be challenging (but not impossible) to achieve in difficult times.
A good 20 Mile March has self-imposed constraints. This creates an upper bound for how far you’ll march when facing robust opportunity and exceptionally good conditions.
A good 20 Mile March is tailored to the enterprise and its environment.
A good 20 Mile March lies largely within your control to achieve.
A good 20 Mile March has a Goldilocks time frame, not too short and not too long but just right.
too short, and you’ll be more exposed to uncontrollable variability;
too long, and it los...
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A good 20 Mile March is designed and self-imposed by the enterprise,
A good 20 Mile March must be achieved with great consistency.
Peter Lewis articulated a stringent performance metric: Progressive Insurance should grow only at a rate at which it could still sustain exemplary customer service and achieve a profitable “combined ratio” averaging 96 percent.
Important, sets a constraint for the business around its target metric of success. Then, define objective, identify the metric, and set the constraints on the business
Progressive’s “profitable combined ratio” mantra became like John Brown’s 20 percent law, a rigorous standard to accomplish year in and year out.
Missing here though is a statement of the objective from which these are derived.
Goldilocks time frame: check.
Assume annually?? Why?
John Brown built the entire Stryker system, from rapid product-development cycles to the Snorkel Award, to achieve “the law” (20 percent earnings growth).
The systems you have and your company culture also derive from these objectives, metrics, and constraints
It means we say that we’d rather be consistently growing…than be hot for one year and then gone the next.”
Long term growth mind set
The 10X companies didn’t have a perfect record,
If they missed it even once, they obsessed over what they needed to do to get back on track:
Growth mind set and post mortem
it works only if you actually achieve your march year after year.
you can also have a non-financial march. A school might have a student-performance march. A hospital might have a patient-safety march. A church might have a number-of-converts march. A government agency might have a continuous-improvement march. A homeless center might have a getting-people-housed march. A police department might have a crime-rate march. Corporations, too, can choose a non-financial march, such as an innovation march.
Intel, for instance, built its 20 Mile March around the idea of “Moore’s Law”
builds confidence in your ability to perform well in adverse circumstances.
reduces the likelihood of catastrophe when you’re hit by turbulent disruption.
helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.
Defines priorities to align team
Tangible achievement in the face of adversity reinforces the 10X perspective: we are ultimately responsible for improving performance.
