Jim Collins
Great By Choice
episode 67
In episode 67 we look into the book Great By Choice (buy on Amazon) which analyses what makes the world’s best companies thrive in even the most uncertain and chaotic times, by distilling nine years of research and great stories into three actionable principles.
Lessons:
Great companies have incredible discipline.
You should innovate only when the evidence supports it.
Never rely on luck or chance to take care of things, maximise them by working hard instead.
show outline
INTRO
History & The X Factor
Dynasties. Contemporary research to transport into the past.
RISK & BIG BETS
Luck
Luck doesn’t cause great success but can end it.
Risk Taking
Test and learn before you bet big
Innovation
Not all about innovation. Scale innovation.
DISCIPLINE
Fanatic Discipline
20 Mile March
Forces Outside of Control
Focus on what you control
Choices and Disciplines
Everything boils down to choices & discipline
OUTRO
Rock Climbing and Discipline
about the book
You can pick up Jim’s ‘Great by Choice’ at all good outlets.
Ten years after the worldwide bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins returns with another groundbreaking work, this time to ask: why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not? Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and his colleague Morten Hansen enumerate the principles for building a truly great enterprise in unpredictable, tumultuous and fast-moving times. This book is classic Collins: contrarian, data-driven and uplifting.
Here are the 3 biggest lessons from this book:
Great companies have incredible discipline.
You should innovate only when the evidence supports it.
Never rely on luck or chance to take care of things, maximize them by working hard instead.
TRANSCRIPT
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mike parsons 0:10
Hello, and welcome to the moon shots podcast. It's Episode 67. I'm your co host, Mike Parsons. And as always, I'm joined by the man and not from Colorado, but from Brooklyn, New York. Hello, Chad. Oh, and
Chad Owen 0:25
yeah, coming to you from rainy and Brooklyn, but I'm a little sad, because we're closing the book here on our series on Jim Collins. But we've got a good show in store for you all.
mike parsons 0:37
I know and hasn't this been just a delight to dig into the work of what you have to say is one of the grandmasters of understanding what makes a business great Jim Collins the body of work is one thing he's methodology is amazing. We've done built to last we've done good to great but the remains were One more book as part of the series. Yeah, I don't think I've seen any authors books in more airports. And then Jim Collins is and I remember seeing this one, I can't remember which airport it was, but I remember seeing it on the shows. But this is great by choice. And it's really, I think, the perfect kind of Capstone to the series because it just builds upon the ideas from good to great and built to last. It does, doesn't it and I think it's a fitting book to end this series on because what's in store for our audience today, Chad, is the chance to understand what choices you can make what we can choose to do to build a great company and in the previous show, we have learnt all about starting by asking yourself what sort of culture do we want to create and that was really encapsulated by that tale of how HP started was that not the best story ever, Chad?
Chad Owen 1:59
Just the thought that A company like HP could be started by two founders that were like, ah, I know that we don't like each other and want to go into business, but I'm not really sure what we're going to build.
mike parsons 2:10
Yeah, so they had the notes of their first company meeting. And they worked out the values, the kind of people they wanted to hire. And they had a side note and we've deferred the decision as to what we're going to build. Mind you, this is one of the greatest product companies of the last hundred years, they didn't even get round to agreeing that because they wanted to build something to last, which is just really, really inspiring. But then Collins moved on to looking at what happened in companies, and they seem to be doing pretty well. And then they catapulted to greatness. Good to Great is perhaps his most popular book and the perfect prelude to what we're going to talk about today. But for me, Chad, Good to Great. The best story he tells in that book is the simple One of get the right people on the bus and get the wrong people off the bus before you work out where you're going. Because if you just don't have the right people on the bus, it's just not gonna work. I thought that was the my biggest lesson what was yours from good to great.
Chad Owen 3:15
I like the idea of the hedgehog concept. And find out what you do well and can return to time and time again, no matter what the market forces are telling you and, and everything else. The idea is that as a hedgehog just curl up into a ball and none of the predators can ever get you because you're just a ball of spikes. But I think it's a fun metaphor.
mike parsons 3:35
Now we're going to dive into a world of great by choice, which is another turn in this narrative of greatness. And I think what's in store for us today is the chance to find out what are the sort of things that you have to do? What are the ways you have to behave? What are the ways you have to think if you want to build a company, if you want to make deliberate choice is towards greatness. And the crazy thing is, as we're recording this were one or two weeks after the death of Kobe Bryant and there was this really inspiring quote, and a story around his greatness where he said, greatness is a choice. And I think that really sets us up for a really exciting hour together to find out what is it that Jim Collins found in his book, great by choice? What were the companies that he discovered that had this special superpower of doing things? And I think what really sets Jim Collins apart outside of the great work that he writes Chad, it's how he gets there, isn't it? It's how he corrects these huge insights.
Chad Owen 4:48
Anyone that's worked with us knows that we like working through rigorous processes. And this wasn't just some idea that he had sitting in an armchair. This is years and years. years, if not decades of work and research that he and his team at Stanford had completed. And we have this great clip to kick off the show with the Charlie Rose interview, where he gets into the history of how he's done the research for all of these books. But why
Jim Collins 5:18
aren't you looking for the 10 x companies? They had to already show you they would 10 x company? Yes, that's what you have to look at history to fight, right. So think of it as a sports dynasties. Right, okay. And you can take the 40, Niners of the 80s. And you could take Warden and his great basketball dynasty, take the Yankees at their best, whatever. And you go back and say these are great sports dynasties. Now, let's go back and look and see what made those dynasties during that dynasty era, different than other teams at that time. That's the essence of our method. And so we're looking at dynastic arrows, we have to find those you have to go back and find who actually won 10 and two to two championships in 12 years, and then study them, but that doesn't mean you have to rely And retrospective data, what we do if you go into my basement, you'll see boxes and boxes and boxes and boxes of materials. We go back and find all the documentation from the time of the events. And so you're sitting there with Gordon Moore's 1965 Moore's Law article, you're sitting there with the documents and articles and materials on Intel in 1971, written in 1971. And what you try to do is you try to transport yourself back, and to the best your ability, knowing, of course, we're all human, but you'd go back and you don't read articles written in 2001. About 1971. You go back and you read materials written in 1970 was of course of course and try to say what does the world look like? articles element the data has to be only get the data and looking back That's correct. That's correct. And then and and but then the leadership factor comes in because john wouldn't brought some there was a reason Now, can we call that as somebody would like to an X Factor? Or can we quantify john wood?
Unknown Speaker 7:07
I don't know how you quantify wisdom.
Jim Collins 7:11
Can you quantify john wooden? he actually did a lot of interesting things. Yeah. He explained leadership. Yes, he director and performance and his own demand of his players. Yes, he did all of that contributed to his championships, ordinary championships. What you can do is you can look at the behaviours and decisions that leaders made and correlate those behaviours and decisions with outcomes, and then ask which behaviours have higher correlations with outcomes? Why they made those decisions, right? why somebody would be driven to go to the South Pole. You can't quantify but you can't quantify things like how many pieces of London did they get? You can't quantify things like how often did they respond quickly to a given to a fast Moving situation you can't quantify what did they do about innovation and you also can't quantify the X Factor too. And I think I increasingly tend to think of the the people that we look at as almost like artists, right? And and if you were to try to imagine if you could do an interview with Beethoven and you were going to ask him so why, why? Why did you go through draft after draft? to try to get that amazing shift from the third to the fourth movement in Symphony number five to stop your heart that you can't quantify. But that Why? Because I can.
mike parsons 8:49
Okay, well, first of all, long clip, but how good was that?
Chad Owen 8:54
You can tell that he's extremely passionate. He's got a basement full of files. From all these companies, I mean, I can't imagine how many papers are down there. But I like Charlie's counter into that, how can you quantify the X Factor and he makes it quite simple in that you just simply look at the decisions that these leaders made and what the outcomes were. And I know it sounds overly simplistic, but if you think about it, it's kind of hard. Certainly back in this, you know, 50 6070s and 80s. Much harder to do that because, you know, didn't have the internet back then to categorise every tweet that someone sent out and in recordings of conference earnings calls and whatnot. So yeah, I just really applaud Jim and the team for doing this research to find out what these leaders were thinking at the time and what the effects of those decisions were.
mike parsons 9:45
Yeah, and as a sidebar, I think there's a like a meta learning in this apart from looking for that wisdom and making the right choices and I would say that I hope that everybody is getting something out of our show. That might help them make better decisions. I think the other thing I want to point out on this, as I was saying this sort of meta side of things, is that why is Jim Collins's work so good, is that he goes back to 1971, to look at a dynasty, and to read what was written in that time about that team and comparing it with others. Like he literally is forensically going back to isolate the culture, the behaviours that inform the decisions that were made towards greatness. And I think that the advice I would give to all of our listeners in everything we do, we should aim to be forensic. Don't guess your ideas, know that they're the right thing, do the work, be disciplined, don't chance your hand really dive into it. So there's a bigger learning here and the way that Jim Collins has been successful is just doing the hard work. As you said she He's got a basement full of research and he combs
Chad Owen 11:04
through it, air lashauwn Good to Great. We have another interesting clip about the research process. But he and his team go into it with absolutely no hypotheses, which I think is really interesting. And they make the data speak for itself. So they don't go with any biases or as best they can, or preconceived notions about what they might find, so that the results can speak for themselves. And there's some truly novel ideas that come out of it.
mike parsons 11:29
Yeah. And what we've got as a result of all of that hard work is to be themes that have you know, risks and big bets. That's number one. And number two is the discipline it takes to be great but before we dive into all of that, Chad, we've got to remind people that it's at moonshots.io where they find all our show notes, our archive, the links they can sign up for our newsletter, but Chad, people have been reviewed. Our show like crazy in all the different applications Spotify, Apple Google Play, how many writings that we up to now this is getting a bit out of control. We've been putting out the coercively What's the nothing 74 ratings currently, and we even had a recent incident of mistaken identity. This is so great, so we got to give a big shout out to Mary. So Mary was reaching out to us to inquire about a particular episode of a different moonshots show on YouTube. Anyway, in the process of politely informing her that hey, this is the wrong moonshots. Mary took it upon herself to say well, who is this moon shots and this Mike and Chad guy took a listen to the show. And she loved our first show, and she says she can't wait for our built to last show. So a big shout out to Mary I tell you what that was Probably the most unusual interaction that I've ever had with a fan with a case of mistaken identity and what a delightful outcome. So we're sending out a big hello to Mary and we hope all of you take a moment to go into your podcast software. Give us a rating, give us a review, share this with friends. And Chad has his favourite, his favourite old school way of you reaching out Chad, how do you want to hear from all of our listeners?
Chad Owen 13:30
Yeah, you can just simply email us at hello@moonshots.io go straight to Mike's and my inboxes. And we love hearing where you are, what you're listening to and what you thought about the show. So be sure to reach out and email us at hello@moonshots.io.
mike parsons 13:47
Very, very nice. And now let's get back to Jim Collins and I've got to say this next clip it was one of the most surprising delights me I consider myself somewhat of a student of Jim Collins. Certainly a number one fan. And actually he has some thoughts on luck, which a really new way of thinking about it. And I love this insight. So let's get into Jim Collins talking about luck.
Jim Collins 14:14
These are audacious tasks in inherently risky settings. It's not about just managing risk. It's about doing something truly exceptional in an inherently risky setting, and doing it in such a way that you get to the top you stomach and be you get back alive. One of the analysis we did was of luck game, actually, all the work and 25 years that I've been associated with the question that probably has tickled me the most is how do you actually analyse luck and we figured out how to do that. But what was very interesting about this if you study lock you to learn that lockers asymmetric as a cause. Luck cannot cause a great outcome cannot cause great success. Good luck. Bad luck. And bad luck can be a cause. If you get four tails in a row or five tails in a row, and you know that eventually you're going to get heads again, it doesn't matter if you get killed at tails number four. And so if over time, luck tends to even out which is what we found, you have to survive the inevitable speights of bad luck, in order to be able to have the good luck that enables you on your quest. And so you're on this quest, you're dealing with a lot of luck, good luck and bad luck and luck with it very interesting things that they do with lock. And that became a fascinating journey for us to understand. But you've got to survive the bad luck. Or it doesn't matter if you flip the coin 1000 times Yep. How many times is going to be heads and how many times will be tail 1000 times it'll come in somewhere fairly close to 500 each. So be a little bit of a statistical tell us if you do it. thousand times it'll still right? Let's suppose you're going to get 10. And so sales is bad luck, right? Right. Somewhere along that thousand, you may get 10 flips of tails, right? What if eight of them kills you? That's why you need to have three to 10 times the cash to ashes ratio, because someday you're gonna get 10 tails, you may need it. When you get not one tails, not two tails, not three tails, not four tails, not five tails, or you get a really big bad piece of luck.
Chad Owen 16:28
He jumped right over, but I don't want to miss it. He said, You have to have a three to 10 cash to assets ratio, because the whole time I listened. I'm like, Okay, so how do I survive the bad luck? And there you go. He gives you a formula back in the napkin, former you can use to understand that but I mean, I would love to know how they figured out how to measure luck. He doesn't tell Charlie, but maybe he'll come out with a book in which he does.
mike parsons 16:51
I think what we can learn from this is we're often way too optimistic around cash flow. I mean, how many startups with good friends Products die because of cash flow. I think we often are so optimistic and we have just enough when in fact, he's saying no, no, you need like three times as much for me, personal finance experts will tell you to have six months salary in cash for a rainy day. And I think for a lot of companies, they just simply don't sit on that much cash. And so you get one bad flip of the coin. That hurts. But what he's really saying here, bad luck can kill you. Because you get three or four those in a row, you need to be able to batten down the hatches. And I think once he makes it that clear, and even gives you that number, it really does force you to think about what can we stand multiple bits of bad luck.
Chad Owen 17:43
It's interesting how he advocates for being so bold, on the one hand, doing something extraordinary in times of uncertainty, but then he's also making this conservative argument of you have to be able to weather the 10 tails and not just the So that's an interesting dichotomy or tension.
mike parsons 18:04
Yeah. And I think what you've just caught out is why entrepreneurial success is so damn hard. You have to be bold. And you have to be conservative simultaneously. And I think it really is knowing how to take a risk, right?
Chad Owen 18:20
Yeah. Many people who define entrepreneurs as people who manage risk as kind of their primary purpose. And yeah, so I think this is a very interesting way that Jim has laid it out for us. You have to find the healthy balance between the two because you can't just sit on cash and not do anything because you're not coming out with anything noteworthy or extraordinary. As Jim says, they also can't take too many bets too recklessly because then you know, you'll be out of cash.
mike parsons 18:47
Now we'd be teasing all our listeners if we didn't have the answer to this dilemma. And this next clip is really a practice that we can all take on learning out to be bold and Conservative all at the same time. He's got a little was not a little thought far from that. But he's got this great piece of advice coming up in this clip. So let's have a listen to Jim Collins talking about taking a risk. So
Unknown Speaker 19:12
you're talking slow and steady. That's really kind of the key here. But what about risk taking? Because if you don't take that risk, are you missing out on a big opportunity?
Jim Collins 19:20
Yeah, well, first of all, it's intense and steady, because 20 mile margin can be intense and difficult times when you don't want to get out of bed and you still do your 20 mile March. So when we look at the empirical creativity, what we found is that they will do what we call fire bullets, then fire cannonballs, what that means is, you fire a bunch of bullets to figure out what's going to work. Then you get your line of sight. You put your gunpowder in a cannonball, and you fire that Cannonball and that is your big bet. So you look at something like the iPod which we write about as how it was a series of bullets, series of small shots, bullet bullet, bullet, bullet bullet, and then finally, boom, it cannibal and finally productive paranoia real quick. You know, the only mistakes you learn from our The ones you survive so you should always have reserve buffers that you can endure shocks and go forward
mike parsons 20:06
bullets and then cannonballs have good is that that is totally it. And Chad we have to admit we're swimming in a little bit of validation from Jim Collins because this test and learn before you bet big is so much what we live and breathe. I mean, we are literally helping our clients test and learn before you bet big at one of your mantras is don't guess. Stop guessing. Yeah, I really is. Oh my gosh. And here he is laying arrived at after studying thousands of companies bullets, then cannonballs. I mean, I can't say it any better.
Chad Owen 20:47
Yeah, I think he puts it to a visual metaphor, what's kind of at the core of the philosophy and how we work and so we might be stealing that visual metaphor from here on forward I think
mike parsons 21:00
The other interesting thing is that Jim does invariably study larger companies. And I think that what we need to point out here is that the reason that he's drawn there is because it's not just an idea. This is something where an idea has been taken to, you know, coast to coast, from continent to continent, and being done at scale. And actually, what he really defines greatness as requiring is the ability to build an idea out and to take it big. So this next clip is Jim putting this scale conversation into context, and really reflecting on its relationship with innovation. So let's have a little listen to Jim Collins talking about innovation. One of the things that I find really interesting, your book is where you dealt with innovation. It because you're sitting here and you put the TV on in the United States people talk about it's all about innovation if we were more innovative if we had a more innovative culture, but you said it's not all about innovation,
Jim Collins 22:05
well, the evidence is quite clear that the pioneering innovators rarely win. So so that's just fascinating data in itself. The most innovative, purely innovative, tend not to be the big winners in the end. Now, the winners are innovative. But but but if you really think about what's, and I'll speak as an American here, I thought a lot about this question because we Americans tend to think that our trump card in the end is innovation. I've come to the conclusion that we're wrong. I believe we are innovative. So I'm very clear about that. But But I think our great distinctive strength has been our ability to scale innovation. It's our ability to take an innovation and make it bigger and bigger and bigger, and to be able to extend it out into and to have it reach more and more people. So if you look at a case like say Intel, Intel wasn't that it just always had the most innovative chip. It was the fact that Intel had this amazing ability to scale up and continue to dump The number of components and continue to deliver it with great quality and excellence. And it was that combination of creativity and discipline, not just creativity that really distinguished historically, I believe that is where America has really shine. We didn't invent the automobile, but we scaled it better. We, we go into industry after industry of our ability to make it big, off of an innovation that really separates.
Chad Owen 23:23
Hmm. I think the magical two words are in this clip. And I think it's creativity and discipline. I think that is at the core of Jim's argument is that you can't just be creative or innovative. But you have to have that discipline to back it up. And so don't go anywhere, this entire second half of the show on that second one discipline. But I'm curious, like for you, Mike, we live in this world of innovation. What's your reaction to him saying it was just not all about innovation or it's not the most innovative that when
mike parsons 24:00
Well, I do have a little twist on that maybe scale is part of the innovation equation. Like if you've got a great idea, or maybe an idea can be good, but it's only once it's done at scale that it's an innovation. And I tell you, as he was talking, the thing I was thinking about most is like what companies do we see the transition from a good idea to innovation at scale? So I wanted to kind of turn it back to you. And see, is there a company you can see at the moment that is on right now here in 2020, on this journey of going to greatness through choice, who's learning how to scale their innovation does any company come to mind?
Chad Owen 24:44
Hmm. That's a hard one. I don't know. I thought about it in the opposite context of a brilliant innovator that couldn't scale. It's only because I read a biography recently and that's Nikola Tesla are Arguably, you know, one of the most innovative inventors in the world of physics and electricity, but like, either his things got stolen or, you know, bought or taken by someone else and taken to market.
mike parsons 25:10
So take his namesake. And you have the very act of learning to scale innovation right now. It's Elon Musk. He is right in this moment. Can he scale this?
Chad Owen 25:24
Well, he's slowly proving that he can. I think some people expected more from him sooner. But I actually think it is certainly starting to pay off. If you take a look at the numbers of vehicles that are rolling off of the assembly lines, you know, it was like a dozen a month not that long ago, and now he's turning out hundreds and hundreds of vehicles.
mike parsons 25:47
Well, we recently saw a massive spike in Tesla's stock because the naysayers finally said to themselves, you know what, I actually think they can stop producing cars at scale as to funny that My mind went back to Nikola Tesla and you are thinking of Tesla, the company. But if you think about it, you'd say that Netflix and Reed Hastings, who were going to be doing a show in the not too distant future, you would say Netflix are really trying to work out if they can pull off Netflix globally, and it would certainly look like they're going to, then that's truly innovation at scale, I would say, peloton, he's in the very early days of this challenge. And they might not make it. I think Uber, on the other hand has proven they can scale it. But what they haven't proven is do they actually have a sustainable business? So I think what's so fascinating here is unfortunately, Jim is saying the job is not done once you've built the prototype, the MVP or the idea, actually, if you want to play with the big boys if you want to be great, it's about innovation at scale.
Chad Owen 26:53
Yeah. And a company that I think is at risk of, you know, maybe being able to survive at Tales, but not 10 is a company like Facebook. So, I mean, no one would argue that it's not been a hugely successful social networking company, but I think they're facing a lot of issues and problems, fines, regulations and just, you know, bad feelings, the part of not just the consumers, but you know, regulatory bodies and governments or world governments even that they may not be able to sustain their success and greatness. And I think you could also argue that they've fallen behind on innovations, you know, they've essentially acquired most of their product innovations of the last I'd even say, six or seven years, I would agree. So Jim Collins is has laid out this challenge of bullets in cannonballs innovation at scale and don't be a victim of bad luck. And you're thinking Geez, Chad and Mike usually they're pretty inspirational person too. But this is sounding like hard work. And I think The truth really is that the second half of the show is going to be about that hard work. There's no shortcut to success. And whilst that's kind of a bummer to hear, there's no such thing as an overnight success. Haven't we learned that a lot on the show Chad, like every entrepreneur we get into you realise they've been working on this their whole life. Yeah, every choice that they've made to go back to your Coby quote, it was a choice for greatness. And in the second half of the show, we're going to dive into the second word of the kind of two words summary of what all this is for Jim Collins, and that's the discipline. So it's not just the ingenuity, creativity and innovation, but it's the discipline that comes behind it, that makes it all work. And he even goes so far as to say it takes fanatic discipline to make it work. And here's a clip of Jim explaining the 20 mile March.
Jim Collins 28:55
Let's talk about phonetic discipline. What does that mean? It's good to speak a little more. So. So think about it. You Facing uncertainty, you maybe get hit with a health thing or you've lost a job or you're trying to build your small business or you're trying to make the sports team and you're thinking, what do we do to get up in the morning? How do I go forward? We came across this thing called the 20 mile March. And the idea is that if you want to walk from Maine, from San Diego to Maine, you could either try to do big 50 mile days in good weather and then hold back in, in bad weather or you could just every day no matter what do 20 miles a day, 20 miles a day, 20 miles a day. I was talking with somebody yesterday who took this idea because our companies all had 20 mile marches 20 mile March 20 mile March 20 mile March, who was trying to make a transition from having lost a job to finding a job. And she said to me, she said I read your fortune piece. I had a 20 mile March. I woke up every single morning and said I am going to reach out to three contacts a day, every single day like clockwork, not seven on one days and zero and others but every single day. 20 mile mark
mike parsons 29:58
20 mile mile Talk about designing habits for success. I can relate to this so much. I am so fanatical about waking up about writing my diary reflecting on my to do list, about exercising, about even the ritual to go to sleep so I maximise My beloved time, fastest sleeping bed. To me, when I look at my best self, it's when I've been doing my 20 mile much every single day highly disciplined. When I look at myself, at my worst, when I haven't delivered, it's been the absence of the 20 mile March. I can relate to this so strongly.
Chad Owen 30:46
I like this idea of consistently showing up a word like discipline can have negative connotations, but I think he's really just saying, put your butt in the chair and do the thing
mike parsons 30:56
and just keep doing the thing. It sounds really simple, but it's often much, much harder. It is it is. And I think there is a sort of the beauty of the 20 mile March. Because whatever the things you commit to doing, you don't have to worry about the big thing of what's my legacy? Am I going to be successful? And am I going to be the best version of myself? All you have to do is get your ass out of bed. Right? All you have to do is write your diary. All you have to do is plan your day. Like, there are some simple things like that's the beauty of the 20 mile March is that showing up is victory. And I think that's such a powerful starting point to discipline and the beauty of that choice to get the hell out of bed. to not have that extra glass of wine at night because you want to be at your best in the morning. or big thing for me is get my ass in bed before 10 o'clock. Then it's I don't need to set an alarm because I'll be up at 530, maybe six o'clock in the morning without an alarm. But it's when I go to bed at 1130 because I watched a documentary, or I watched something on Netflix. And then I'm like, Damn, you know, technically, I shouldn't get up too late, but I got like cold starting at eight. So I gotta get up at seven and you know, then you've let it go. To me March the 20 miles every single day is very powerful. But it brings me to this point of whatever is going to happen in the day. I'm in control of this and this is great speech by a Navy leader. And he's central advice is make your bed every single day. And the talk that he gives around that is everything else might go wrong. But when you come home, at the end of the day, you've made your bed and you can get back into I love that because it's like, at least you control that bit.
Chad Owen 32:54
Right But this idea connects back to luck, you know, by consistent Showing up and doing these things, you're assured that you can weather some of those harder times. In some ways, I think what he's arguing for is this, pardon me venturing into philosophy for just 30 seconds. But there's this stoic idea of equanimity. And it's essentially, you know, keeping an even keel. So rather than, as he says, you know, do 70 miles in one day and zero the next just do 20 consistently. And so, if you can keep that consistency, it will just not only deliver more consistent results, but it'll give you the confidence that you can weather both the good and the bad times.
mike parsons 33:39
Totally, totally, totally. And what's beautiful is in finding how companies made a choice to be great Jim Collins has this great thinking about where to put your focus. So let's have a listen to Jim Collins with another piece of great wisdom. The the
Jim Collins 34:00
really big thing that comes from the book is that the leaders who are facing forces outside of their control as many of these leaders are, and they have so many things that they can't control, that there are ways of exerting a sense of control in a world that's out of control. And by having that, you know, insanely fanatic discipline and the empirical creativity and the productive paranoia, kind of all infused with that ambition, bigger than yourself, allows you to navigate a world that is out of your control and do really well at it. So to me, the biggest lesson from all of it is your performance or the performance of your community or the performance of your organisation isn't determined by what happens to you. It's determined by how you lead the choices you make the behaviours you break, and that even in extreme environments, that's true.
Chad Owen 34:52
How many startup founders and CEOs need to take that quote to heart
mike parsons 34:58
I know, I know. And the thing is that the things that are outside of your control are often bigger. And so therefore, they're big, and you don't control them cause you more stress. So like focus on your own 20 mile March, right? Because you can control that your choice to wake up and make the bed, to write the diary to plan the day. That's all a choice. And the crazy thing is, if you do make those choices, and you do get those things done, you feel great. There is nothing better for me of arriving in the office, to see the team. And to know that I have woken up, worked out, written my diary, worked deeply for maybe 45 minutes to an hour. And I arrived into the office, and I feel fantastic. And it's 910 o'clock is the best feeling in the world. They were all my choices. So whatever chaos unravels throughout the day, I still have this starting point. And I think that's such a great lesson about you know, focus on what you can enjoy. A timeless piece of wisdom, isn't it, Chad?
Chad Owen 36:02
Yeah, I mean it. I've been reading it in. Marcus Aurelius is meditations, again, to take it back to stoicism. But this idea of carving out the time to be sure that you can work on what is within your control can go from your personal into your business life. I know so many people that are obsessed with, you know, the competition and what the competition is doing, and how can we beat the competition. But you see, this most successful companies out there just simply showing up and doing their thing. And that takes care of the competition, without even ever having to worry about it.
mike parsons 36:39
I totally, totally agree. The beauty of all of the work that Jim has done thousands of companies deep somewhere in his dusty basement, brings us back to some very intrinsic choices, not even within the organisation, but about ourselves about us the individual how we going to show up. We just have two more clips left. This next one is really bringing it to a really sharp pointy end. Let's have a listen to Jim Collins talking about choices and discipline.
Jim Collins 37:13
Now I digress to the research method for a very simple reason. It was an underlying message from that research from that method. See if you study those to become great in contrast to those that did not, but they're in the same circumstances, facing the same conditions coming from the similar point in life. Then the explanatory variable for why some become great and others don't buy some sustain it and others don't, cannot be circumstance cannot be the environment cannot be the cards they're dealt. And then through all the research we've done now, which is for studies, they all use that method and if I could pick one main overall point to come from at all, it would be simply this. greatness is not a function of circumstance. greatness is a function first and foremost of conscious choice and discipline. We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, we are freed by our choices. And by our disciplines,
Chad Owen 38:24
choice and discipline, there it is. Oh my gosh, he's like,
mike parsons 38:28
so stoic in those remarks. He is getting down to brass tacks in after all of his body of work. I mean, I dare you to disagree with Jim Collins. Chad.
Chad Owen 38:41
Go on. I dare you. Yeah. 25 years in four studies with Stanford Graduate students. Yeah, I'll take a pass on challenging that.
mike parsons 38:49
Just wonderful. So he is challenging us don't rely on lock. You know, should you bullets then cannonballs and your are not done to you've done this at scale. And that takes discipline. And discipline comes to focusing on what you control. And it's the choices that you have that you face. When you wake up every morning. It's the choice that you make, which will determine your success. So the great news, it's all in our hands, the bad news, it's all on our hands.
Chad Owen 39:23
There's this interesting concept of willpower that I've come across both in Jim's work and and many others, but it's just simply every choice that you have to make during your day is depleting some part of your willpower. So this idea of getting the important things done first, then having the discipline to do those things that are going to make the biggest difference. And either automating or delegating away everything else. I mean, it's something that I'm horrible at that I need to get better at, but I at least in being, you know, encouraged here by Jim to do so because, according to him, that's the single united Factor amongst all the companies that he's studied is that he can point to the companies that become and stay great because of the choices and the discipline to make and stick to those choices. Yeah, it's a good blueprint, but I feel like I have a lot of work to do here.
mike parsons 40:17
Yeah, you gotta let it sink in. But while you, me and all of our audience are letting that sinking, we have a personal anecdote from Jim to ran out not only this show, but the series on him. And while all I can say is just sit back, and enjoy this last clip from Jim Collins, cuz this says it all when I was in high school, I must have been maybe 16 or 17 years old.
Jim Collins 40:49
And I went rock climbing and Eldorado Canyon, where I near where I grew up in Boulder, as I'd been climbing about three or four years, no one to do a climb called p two. Now at the time Hi, I'm TJ was a relatively difficult climb. And I went at it with a kind of an arrogant lack of preparation. And I hadn't prepared for being able to do certain kinds of finger cracks. I think I figured I'll figure it out when I get there. And I also didn't pause. This is a thing about boldness and discipline. I didn't pause to really double smek double check all my systems. Okay, so I'm on the fourth pitch. I'm about 400 feet above the ground. I'm going across this slanting crack system that I'd had trouble that I started have trouble with my forearms started to gorge with blood and lactic acid, which means some point even if you're on a big hole, your hands are going to melt off, okay. And I'm about to fall. I'm 400 feet above the ground, but it should be okay because there's protection. I'm tied into the rope. I may take a fall but I'll get caught for something Reason and to this day I still don't know why my brain triggered that I should look at my not and I looked down at my not my not had come untied I had made the mistake of never really thinking about the best not for certain types of situations and I tied them with what's a bowl win. Now the advantage of a bowl and Is it easy to untie? If you right the disadvantage of a Bolden is it's easy to untie. It had come on tied as I kept moving across and it is just hanging in my harness. I'm seconds away from falling. Only now I will die. I will die. If I fall off. my forearms are melting. And the knot had come untied and so I called down to my partner I said why not? Come on? What is he gonna do? He can't do anything. You just watch me fall to my death and I There was an old Fixed Peter in the rock that would put there from the first to set an old soft RP Tom and I looked at it and I probably had 1520 seconds before my hands would unwrap if that maybe 10 I took a rudder and I clicked it into the peloton. I clipped the peloton into my heart at the that runner into my hardest and just wet. Please hold that let go.
Unknown Speaker 43:25
And it helped.
Jim Collins 43:27
I put in a backup. I grabbed the not be tied at one to the legend convulsant I was very calm at that moment. I got to the ledge I went into convulsive shaking, I was sick to my stomach for days because of the whatever happens chemically. What I learned from that is two things. The first is that when you're in an unforgiving world, gravity is unforgiving. It doesn't care. It never takes a day off ever. And if you make one mistake it can kill you. It's the wrong kind of mistake. And what I learned is that sense of Yeah, I want to do adventurous things. I want to climb rocks, I want to be a nice, empty, I want to do things that get my adrenaline going. I but I need the discipline to always do all the right preparation to always think about the right nuts to always be cross checking my systems so that I can do those bold things and stay alive in an unforgiving environment. And as you and I spoke about earlier today, I think that's the rest of I think we're all heading into an unforgiving environment, where we're going to have to be both bold and disciplined. The second thing I learned was that paetynn had not been there. We might not be here together. It was just by chance. That that P Tom was right there. And once you realise when you rewind the tape of your own life is that there are these crucial moments where if the luck had gone the other way, you might have gotten killed. And so what You have to do is to always be x putting those extra disciplines in place. Because I was lucky to live. And what I took from that is I never want to have to be lucky to live
Chad Owen 45:14
never have to be lucky to live. Yeah, if that doesn't drive home the point of discipline, I don't know what does.
mike parsons 45:25
Yeah, that was fantastic. Also, you know, let's just take a step back. This guy has a very deep academic background, very rigorous, data driven approach, yet he's capacity to tell that personal story of him as a 16 year old and how this relates to his life's work studying businesses that were great. Is that not the way to end the Jim Collins series on the Mitchell? Yeah,
Chad Owen 45:50
come on. Thank you for finding that clip and putting it here at the end of the show.
mike parsons 45:55
I'd say Raka. That's so good. It's so good. What I feel like This is just been a big reminder a big poke in the about discipline, and to take joy and discipline and don't get bored with it. Take joy in the discipline,
Chad Owen 46:13
the healthy tension between boldness in discipline is really I think what I'm going to take away from this, I don't think I'm ever going to find the centre in that because one, I think it would be boring, but I think it's going to be different for everyone. Some businesses may be forced to be a little bit more bold and others may be forced to be a little bit more disciplined, but I think as long as you have a healthy tension between those two poles, then you have, you know, the makings of a really interesting company and career.
mike parsons 46:44
So there it was Jim Collins three, absolutely chock a block, dense, tasty, brimming foaming at the top episodes just so much to learn that I love the fact We come out of this series, refreshing ourselves with a grand master. We come out of this series knowing that it's all about the hard work and just enjoy the hard work. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Chad, does anything change tomorrow when you wake up? Does anything really changed for you? Is there a reminder here for you that you're going to take away?
Chad Owen 47:21
I can't decide if it's creativity and discipline or boldness and discipline. It's going to be one of those two that's going like on a posted on my mirror in my bathroom or in my closet,
mike parsons 47:31
boldness and discipline. Well, if Jim Collins was great, so was a gentleman called Clayton Christensen. And we did a Clayton Christensen show in the early part of our life.
Chad Owen 47:45
It wasn't that so long ago maybe it was last year
mike parsons 47:48
was the last year feels like a we've done so much. Oh my gosh, but Clayton has passed away. He's no longer with us. He had a real battle with cancer. It's safe to say that Clayton is on par. with Jim Collins, when we talk about great companies, companies that innovate at scale, claisen wrote the innovators dilemma, which is a must read. And I think it would only be fitting that in the next show Chad, that we revisit Clayton, and we look at the body of his work and remind ourselves on what he offered us. It was truly a legacy. Yeah, he wrote a very interesting Harvard Business Review article that he also turned into a book called How will you measure your life? So I'm excited to take a look and retrospective, not only at the innovators dilemma and in his other books, but also how will you measure your life I think, especially after having listened to that clip from Jim Collins about almost falling off of the cliff while rock climbing. There's some really interesting questions. I think that we can reflect on and and ask ourselves when we're revisiting the greatness of the thinking of Clayton Christensen, and why We're at it. If you want to see what's coming for us, you can go to moonshots.io. And look at the list of future shows. But let's give a taste of that, Chad. We've got two brand new series after we record Christian soon. Why don't you share with people what we've got coming up some very cool series.
Chad Owen 49:21
I'm gonna have to find something else to read here. We're leaving the land of authors to find a fiction book or something to take up here. So after our look back on clay Christiansen, we're going to be going into a female tour of innovation with the likes of Michelle Obama, and Arianna Huffington. and Melinda Gates. Yes, that's the third one. And then after that, we've been thinking about a media focused trifecta with the likes of Bob Iger from Disney Kevin fyGi, also of Disney associated with the Marvel franchise and Of course, Reed Hastings from Netflix.
mike parsons 50:02
Wow, that is a pretty exciting run of almost 10 shows ahead of us how exciting but it was so exciting to share Jim Collins together and hopefully to inspire all of our listeners to go and reflect on his work on his books and see how they can be great by choice. Chad, I think we've got to the end of another show. You know, I guess the big question is, now that you're back from Colorado, what's next in the sort of slightly grey slightly wet February in Brooklyn, New
Chad Owen 50:38
York. It's funny, you should ask Mike because I believe you and I are going to be recording it after this show. Our latest podcast, we haven't been plugging here but probably should.
mike parsons 50:50
Did we not mention it? I thought,
Chad Owen 50:52
you know, just once. We gotta plug it in, plug it again. Okay. Mike and I are taking a very practical business focused approach. Innovation. On the bottom up podcast, you can go to bottom up.io and find the podcast or search for it in your pod catcher of choice. But Mike and I spend about 10 minutes or less focused on really practical tips and tricks and tools in the areas of design thinking, lean startup, agile, rapid prototyping, and so many more. I believe we're going into how to run surveys and learn from your customers in the next series on the podcast.
mike parsons 51:31
Can't wait to get into that. So go to bottom up.io if you're interested in that, and when in doubt, go to moonshots.io and dive into all our back catalogue and catch all the old shows. Chad, it's been fantastic to finish the Jim Collins series we got so much have ahead of us on the moonshots podcast. I'm fired up. I hope you and all of our listeners are too. But for now, that's it. It's a wrap of the moonshots podcast.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai