Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

Making the most of victories is what the flywheel principle is all about (see the previous chapter on The Map for a brief description of the flywheel concept). I’ve come to see the flywheel effect as one of the most important strategic principles to come from all of our research into why some companies become great, why some fail to become great, a

Organizations without the components of a flywheel already in place—such as early-stage entrepreneurial companies—can sometimes jump-start the process by importing insights from flywheels that others have built.

Think of it this way. Suppose you have, say, six components in the flywheel, and you score your performance in each from 1 to 10. What happens if your execution scores are 9, 10, 8, 3, 9, and 10? The entire flywheel stalls at the component scoring 3. To regain momentum, you need to bring that 3 up to at least an 8.