Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All

by Jim Collins

We never blame circumstance; we never blame the environment.

Don’t even think about playing a blame game when students aren’t learning. Have the strength to look at the problem and take responsibility.

Applicable to every business or organization big and small

Don’t think the solution is “out there.” If students aren’t learning, the school needs to change.

In other words, look internally and figure out what you can control and change to impact the result

No one is allowed to lag behind.

Constraint and metric

to measure progress not just at the end of the year but also throughout the year, working with her teachers to track performance, taking corrective action along the way.

Important point. Set metrics and track them regularly! Reviews at end of period will not only miss mark, but also miss critical information about your systems, how they're working or not working, that should be captured, documented, and corrected in real time to stay on course and preform well in the future

up and up and up.

Objective, metric, constraints, systems, and culture reinforce your flywheel

The critical step lay not in finding the perfect program or in waiting for national education reform, but in taking action; picking a good program; instilling the fanatic discipline to make relentless, iterative progress; and staying with the program long enough to generate sustained results.

Randolphs get started approach and godins process working together in harmony

Jerry Sanders proclaimed that AMD would become the first semiconductor company to generate 60 percent growth two years in a row and that it could grow more in a single year than it had in its entire 14-year prior history.

It was quite a contrast to Intel, where Gordon Moore stated at the exact same time that he aimed to limit Intel’s growth so as to minimize the chances of losing control.

If you deplete your resources, run yourself to exhaustion, and then get caught at the wrong moment by an external shock, you can be in serious trouble. By sticking with your 20 Mile March, you reduce the chances of getting crippled by a big, unexpected shock. Every 10X winner pulled further ahead of its less successful comparison company during turbulent times. Ferocious instability favors the 20 Mile Marchers.

Amundsen and his team reached a point 45 miles from the South Pole.

He went 17 miles.

Throughout the journey, Amundsen adhered to a regimen of consistent progress, never going too far in good weather, careful to stay far away from the red line of exhaustion that could leave his team exposed, yet pressing ahead in nasty weather to stay on pace.

Having a clear 20 Mile March focuses the mind; because everyone on the team knows the markers and their importance, they can stay on track.

Financial markets are out of your control. Customers are out of your control. Earthquakes are out of your control. Global competition is out of your control. Technological change is out of your control. Most everything is ultimately out of your control.

But when you 20 Mile March, you have a tangible point of focus that keeps you and your team moving forward, despite confu...

a classic Level 5 leader who detested arrogance in any form. Combining a boyish playfulness and joyful pursuit of innovation with fanatic discipline, he focused Genentech on only product categories in which it could become best in the world with a strong economic engine.

First, 20 Mile Marching can help you turn underachievement into superior achievement; so long as you stay alive and in the game, it’s never too late to start the march.

Second, searching for—and even finding—the Next Big Thing does not in itself make a great company.

A good 20 Mile March has the following seven characteristics: 1. Clear performance markers. 2. Self-imposed constraints. 3. Appropriate to the specific enterprise. 4. Largely within the company’s control to achieve. 5. A proper timeframe—long enough to manage, yet short enough to have teeth. 6. Imposed by the company upon itself. 7. Achieved with high consistency.

performance is not determined by your conditions but largely by your own actions.

10X winners set their own 20 Mile March, appropriate to their own enterprise;

There’s an inverse correlation between pursuit of maximum growth and 10X success.

10X winners left growth on the table, always assuming that something bad lurked just around the corner, thereby ensuring they wouldn’t be caught overextended.

they had 20 Mile Marches in place long before they were big successes, which helped them to become successful in the first place.

The evidence from our research does not support the premise that 10X companies will necessarily be more innovative than their less successful comparisons.

the evidence still does not support the idea that maximum pioneering innovation is the most essential differentiator of 10X success.

we’re not saying that Intel failed to innovate—but historical evidence shows Intel to be less of a pioneering innovator at critical junctures than most people realize.

we’re not saying that innovation is unimportant. Every company in this study innovated. It’s just that the 10X winners innovated less than we would have expected relative to their industries and relative to their comparison cases; they were innovative enough to be successful but generally not the most innovative.

each environment has a level of “thresh old innovation” that you need to meet to be a contender in the game;

once you’re above the threshold, especially in a highly turbulent environment, being more innovative doesn’t seem to matter very much.

once a company meets the threshold of innovation necessary for survival and success in a given environment, it needs a mixture of other elements to become a 10X company—in particular, the mixture of creativity and discipline.

utterly crushed Advanced Memory Systems. “We had a better design but we blew it in the marketplace,” said Advanced Memory Systems’

But more telling is a motto Intel had coined for itself by 1973: “Intel Delivers.”

“We want to do one good job on engineering,” continued Noyce, “and sell it over and over again.”

“Intel innovates to a necessary threshold, then blows everyone away—utterly, completely, fanatically, obsessively—with its ability to deliver on its innovations, at expected cost, with high reliability and great consistency.”

“What Intel needed going forward was not the courage to take great leaps ahead but the discipline to take orderly steps in a controlled fashion.” Andy Grove said during this era, “We have to systematize things so we don’t crash our technology,”

Intel leaders choose as the #1 core value

discipline.

the combination of discipline and creativity.

The great task, rarely achieved, is to blend creative intensity with relentless discipline so as to amplify the creativity rather than destroy it.

obsessive focus on innovation by itself does not make for great success and might even lead to demise;

On the other hand, if you just sit still and never do anything bold or new, the

world will pass you by, and you’ll die from that instead.

useful idea: fire bullets, then fire cannonballs.

First, you fire bullets to figure out what’ll work.

Then once you have empirical confidence based on the bullets, you concentrate your resources and fire a cannonball.

After the cannonball hits, you keep 20 Mile Marching to make the most...

aimed at learning what works and that meets three criteria:

A bullet is low cost.