Leveraging the Flywheel Concept in Your Business

The Fly­wheel is a very sim­ple and potent tool designed to make a busi­ness more powerful.

Jim Collin’s research, done over years, shows that the Fly­wheel is one of his most impact­ful con­cepts. He also did a sep­a­rate mono­graph Turn­ing the Fly­wheel – a quick and excel­lent read – to help you under­stand the Fly­wheel of oth­er com­pa­nies and to lead you to yours.

With a Fly­wheel clear­ly and accu­rate­ly artic­u­lat­ed, com­pa­nies are able to make bet­ter deci­sions about resource allo­ca­tion and goal set­ting to improve the pow­er of the entire enter­prise. The ulti­mate ben­e­fit comes when the Fly­wheel pow­ers itself, over time, and the ener­gy cre­at­ed, with­in itself, makes it stronger and stronger.

Here are some oth­er pod­casts and arti­cles you may find helpful:

Pod­casts

• Jim Collins’ Fly­wheel Concept
• Jim Collins & His Concepts

Arti­cles

• The Fly­wheel Con­cept – Is It Work­ing For or Against You?
• How Sim­ple is Your Strategy?
• Sim­ple Strate­gies Relent­less­ly Executed

A Fly­wheel Con­cept Exam­ple: Amazon

• Because of low­er prices on more offer­ings, we can’t help but increase cus­tomer vis­its and
• Because of increased cus­tomer vis­its we can’t help but attract more third-par­ty sell­ers and
• Because we have more third-par­ty sell­ers, we can’t help but expand the store and extend dis­tri­b­u­tion and
• Because of that we can’t help but grow rev­enues per fixed costs and
• Because of that we can’t help but low offer low­er prices on more offerings.

Easy to Say. Hard­er to do.

After work­ing with dozens of com­pa­nies on this, and after work­shops and two-day pri­vate ses­sions in Jim’s lab, we found that Fly­wheels are often a lot hard­er to fig­ure out than they first appear, so it’s impor­tant to:

Take your time

• Peo­ple miss the point – and the pow­er – when they try to make their Fly­wheel too simple.
• Plan on mul­ti­ple ses­sions over a few months, with your exec­u­tive team, to real­ly crys­tal­lize your Fly­wheel. Let it sit for a while, then come back to it, again. Iter­ate until you’re con­vinced that each one is tru­ly a ​“we can’t help but…” 

The Key: Each of the five or six aspects of the Fly­wheel need to dri­ve or trans­fer ener­gy to the next one. Ide­al­ly, you should be able to say, ​“because of A, we can’t help but get B…”. It’s like grav­i­ty when one thing just auto­mat­i­cal­ly falls to the next.

Gath­er insights

• Pull insights from your Hedge­hog prin­ci­ple and SMaC list and review your past strate­gic plans to look for the things on which you con­stant­ly focus.

The Chal­lenge

• If you haven’t com­plet­ed your Fly­wheel, devote time to work on it.
  • Ask your team to read the book, then take a cou­ple of hours to work on a draft, ide­al­ly with a facilitator.
  • Plan to come back three or four times, over a six-month peri­od, to make sure you get it nailed.

For more, lis­ten to Episode 117 of The Growth Whisperers.

Our team has helped many com­pa­nies with their Fly­wheel, so if you need help, please let us know.

Lawrence & Co’s work focus­es on sus­tain­able and enhanced growth for you and your busi­ness. Our diverse and expe­ri­enced group of advi­sors can help your lead­ers and exec­u­tive teams stay com­pet­i­tive through the use of var­i­ous learn­ing tools includ­ing work­shops, webi­na­rs, exec­u­tive retreats, or one-to-one coaching.

We help high-achiev­ing lead­ers to have it all – a great busi­ness and a reward­ing life. Con­tact us for sim­ple and impact­ful advice. No BS. No fluff.