Compile a list of failures and disappointments. This should include new initiatives and offerings by your enterprise that have failed outright or fell far below expectations.

This forms the backbone of the framework, laid out as four basic stages: Stage 1: Disciplined People Stage 2: Disciplined Thought Stage 3: Disciplined Action Stage 4: Building to Last Each of the four stages consists of two or three fundamental principles. The flywheel principle falls at a central point in the framework, right at the pivot point fr

For a truly great company, the Big Thing is never any specific line of business or product or idea or invention. The Big Thing is your underlying flywheel architecture

Test the flywheel against the three circles of your Hedgehog Concept. A Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deeply understanding the intersection of the following three circles: (1) what you’re deeply passionate about, (2) what you can be the best in the world at, and (3) what drives your economic or

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.

In creating a good-to-great transformation, there’s no single defining action, no grand program, no single killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment.

But how to turn a single product into a sustained flywheel, especially as a garage start-up? Gentes studied Nike and gleaned an essential insight. There’s a hierarchy of social influence for athletic gear. If, for instance, you get a Tour de France winner to wear your helmet, serious nonprofessional cyclists will want to wear that helmet, which the

The Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles: (1) what you’re deeply passionate about, (2) what you can be the best in the world at, and (3) what drives your economic or resource engine. When a leadership team becomes fanatically disciplined in making

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