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.

Instead, Amazon committed fully to its flywheel and then innovated aggressively within that flywheel to build and accelerate momentum. Amazon

apply that understanding with creativity and discipline, you get the power of strategic compounding.

Notice how each component in the Vanguard flywheel isn’t merely a “next action step on a list” but almost an inevitable consequence of the step that came before

Notice the inexorable logic. Trace your way around

THE FLYWHEEL No matter how dramatic the end result, building a great enterprise never happens in one fell swoop. There’s no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum

For most organizations, a one-year 20 Mile March cycle works well, although it could be shorter or longer. But whatever the cycle, the 20 Mile March requires both short-term focus (you have to hit the march this cycle) and long-term building (you have to hit the march every subsequent cycle for years to decades). As such, it’s a rarified form of

Test the flywheel against your list of successes and disappointments. Does your empirical

If you have more than six components, you’re making it too complicated; consolidate and simplify to capture the essence of the flywheel.