Mike 
If you’ve read much of my writing, you know that I’m a fan of Jim Collins, who has given us memorable phrases like “getting the right people on the bus” and “Level 5 leadership.” Unfortunately, many people have forgotten one of the most important findings from his research.
In Good to Great, Collins describes the importance of the “flywheel effect”:
Sustainable transformations follow a predictable pattern of buildup and breakthrough. Like pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, it takes a lot of effort to get the thing moving at all, but with persistent pushing in a consistent direction over a long period of time, the flywheel builds momentum, eventually hitting a point of breakthrough.Don’t rush through this quote. It is packed with important phrases – “a lot of effort … persistent pushing … consistent direction … long period of time.” As a leader, I suspect that you’re making a lot of effort, but what about the remaining phrases? Is the full statement descriptive of your leadership style? Far too often, I see ministry leaders giving up before they ever build momentum with their flywheels. They fall into a pattern that Collins terms “the doom loop” in which organizations “frequently launched new programs – often with great fanfare and hoopla aimed at ‘motivating the troops.’” His research found that this approach failed to produce sustainable results. The reasons for this are easy to understand. Launching something new is far more exciting than laboring to turn a heavy flywheel. Even if you resist the initial urge to grab for the next silver bullet, you may begin to wonder if you’re pushing the right flywheel and if it will ever achieve breakthrough momentum. Sure, it’s tempting to abandon the flywheel, but where will that leave you and your organization? I hope you’ll take a few minutes to reflect on your own leadership tendencies, and then give your flywheel a big push. It’s easy to receive my blogs by email. Just sign-up on Feedburner by clicking here.]]>
