Great by choice pdf free download

A great public school, a great hospital, a great sports team, a great church, a greatmilitary unit, a greathomeless shelter, a greatorchestra, a great non-profit—each has its own definition of results, defined by its core purpose—yet the question of what it takes to achieve superior perfor mance amidst unrelenting uncertainty faces them all.

Greatness is not justa business quest; it's a human quest. So, we invite you to join us on a journey to learn what we learned. Challenge and question; let the evidence speak. Take what you find usefuland apply it to creatinga greatenterprise that doesn't justreact to events but shapes events. As the influential management thinker Peter Drucker taught, the best—perhaps even the only—way to predict the future is to create it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.

For one team, it would be a race to victory and a safe return home. For members of the second team, it would be a devastat ing defeat, reaching the Pole only to find the wind-whipped flags of their rivals planted 34days earlier, followed by a race for their lives—a race thatthey lost in the end, as the advancing winter swallowed them up.

All five members ofthe second Pole team perished, staggering from exhaustion, suffering the dead-black pain offrostbite and then freezing to death as some wrote their final journal entries and notes to loved ones back home.

It's a near-perfect matched pair. Here we have two expedition leaders—Roald Amundsen, the winner, and Robert Falcon Scott, the loser—of similar ages 39 and 43 and with comparable experience. Amundsen and Scott started their respective journeys for the Pole within days of each other, both facing a round trip of more than fourteen hundred miles roughly equal to the distance from New York City to Chicago and back into an uncertain and unforgiving environ ment, where temperatures could easily reach 20 degrees below zero F even during the summer, made worse bygale-force winds.

And keep in mind, this was They had no means of modern communication to call back to base camp—no radio, no cell phones, no satellite links— and a rescue would have been highly improbable at the South Pole if they screwed up. One leader led his team to victory and safety.

The other led his team to defeat and death. Why did one achieve spectacular success in such an extreme set of conditions, while the other failed even to survive? It'sa fascinating question and a vivid analogy for our overall topic. Here we have two leaders, both on quests for extreme achieve ment in an extreme environment.

And it turns out that the 10X busi nessleadersin our research behavedvery much likeAmundsen and the comparison leaders behaved much more like Scott. We'll turn to the business leaders in a few pages, but first let's add a bit more detail to the tale of Amundsen and Scott. To learn even more about Amundsen and Scott,werecommend startingwithRoland Huntford's superbbook The Last Place on Earth, a massive, well-written comparative study of these two men.

It was He had a nearly two-thousand-mile journey ahead of him. And how did Amundsen make the journey? By carriage? By horse? By ship? He bicycled. After all, he reasoned, some day he mightbe shipwrecked, finding himself surrounded bydolphins, so he might as well know if he could eat one. It was all part of Amundsen's years of building a foundation for his quest, training his body and learning as much as possible from practi cal experience about what actually worked. Amundsen even made a pilgrimage to apprentice with Eskimos.

What betterway to learn what worked in polar conditions than to spend time with a people who have hundreds ofyears of accumulated experience in ice and coldand snow and wind? He learned how Eskimos used dogs to pull sleds. He ob served how Eskimos never hurried, moving slowly and steadily, avoid ing excessive sweat that could turn to ice in sub-zero temperatures.

He adopted Eskimo clothing, loose fitting to help sweat evaporate and protective. He systematically practiced Eskimo methods and trained himself for every conceivable situation he might encounter en route to the Pole. Amundsen's philosophy: You don't wait until you're in an unex pected storm to discover that you need more strength and endurance. You don'twait until you're shipwrecked to determine ifyou can eat raw dolphin.

You don't wait until you're ontheAntarctic journey tobecome a superb skier and dog handler. You prepare with intensity, all the time, so that when conditions turn against you, you can draw from a deep reservoir ofstrength.

And equally, you prepare so that when conditions turn in your favor, you can strike hard. Robert Falcon Scott presents quite a contrast to Amundsen. In the years leading up to the race for the South Pole, he could have trained like a maniac on cross-country skis and taken a thousand-mile bike ride. He did not. He could have gone to live with Eskimos.

He could have practiced more with dogs, making himself comfortable with choosing dogs over ponies. Ponies, unlike dogs, sweat on their hides so they become encased inice sheets when tethered, posthole and struggle in snow, and don't generally eatmeat.

Amundsen planned to kill some ofthe weaker dogs along the way to fuel the stronger dogs. Scott also bet on "motorsledges" that hadn't been fully tested in the mostextreme South Pole conditions. As it turned out, the motor-sledge engines cracked within the first few days, the ponies failed early, and his team slogged through mostofthe journey by"man- hauling," harnessing themselves to sleds, trudging across the snow, and pulling the sleds behind them.

Unlike Scott, Amundsen systematically built enormous buffers for unforeseen events. When setting supply depots, Amundsen not only flagged a primary depot, he placed 20black pennants easy toseeagainst the white snow in precise increments for miles on either side, giving himself a target more than ten kilometers wide in case he got slightly offcourse coming back in a storm. Toaccelerate segments ofhis return journey, he marked his path every quarter of a mile with packing-case remnants and every eight miles with black flags hoisted upon bamboo poles.

Scott, in contrast, put a single flag on his primary depot and left no markings on his path, leaving him exposed to catastrophe if he went even a bit off course. Amundsen stored three tons of supplies for 5 men starting outversus Scott's one ton for 17 men. In his final push for the South Pole from 82 degrees, Amundsen carried enough extra supplies to miss every single depot and still have enough left over to go another hundred miles.

Scott ran everything dangerously close to his calculations, so that missing even one supply depot would bring disas ter. A single detail aptly highlights the difference in their approaches: Scott brought one thermometer for a key altitude-measurement de vice, and he exploded in "an outburst of wrath and consequence" when it broke; Amundsen brought four such thermometers to cover for accidents.

Amundsen didn't know precisely what lay ahead. He didn't know the exact terrain, the altitude ofthe mountainpasses, or all the barriers he might encounter. He and his team might get pounded by a series of unfortunate events. Yet he designed the entire journey tosystematically reduce the role of big forces and chance events by vigorously embrac ing the possibility of those very same big forces and chance events.

Scott left himselfunprepared and complained in his journal about his bad luck. How great may be the element ofluck!

He and his teammates planted the Norwegian flag, which "unfurled itself with a sharp crack," and dedicated the plateau to the Norwegian king. Then they went right back to work.

They erected a tent and attached a letter to the Norwe gian king describing their success; Amundsen addressed the envelope to Captain Scott presuming Scottwould be the nextto reach the Pole as an insurance policyin case his team met an unfortunate end on the journey home. He could not have known that Scott and his team were man-hauling their sleds, fully miles behind. More than a month later, at p.

Great God! Scott turned around and headed back north, more than seven hundred miles of man-hauling from home base, just as the season began to turn. The weather became more severe, with increasing winds and decreasing temperatures, while supplies dwindled and the men struggled through the snow. Amundsen and his team reached home base in good shape on Jan uary 25, the precise day he'd penned into his plan.

Running out of supplies, Scott stalled in mid-March, exhausted and depressed. In the first 34 days of their respective expeditions, Amundsen and Scott had exactly the same ratio, 56 percent, ofgood days to bad days of weather. They had divergent outcomes principally because they dis played very different behaviors. So too, with the leaders in our research study.

Like Amundsen and Scott, our matched pairs were vulnerable to the same environments at the same time. Yet some leaders proved themselves to be lOXers while leaders on the otherside ofthe pairdid not. In our research, we observed that the lOXers shared a set of behavioral traits thatdistinguished them from the comparison leaders.

In this chapter we introduce these traits, and in subsequent chapters we describe how our lOXers led and built their successful companies consistent with them. Let's first look at what we did not find about lOXers relative to their less successful comparisons.

They're not more creative. They're not more visionary. They're not more charismatic. They're not more ambitious. They're not moreblessed byluck. They're not more risk seeking. They're not more heroic. They're not more prone to making big, bold moves. They displayed all these traits, but so didtheir less successful comparisons.

So then, how did the lOXers distinguish themselves? First, lOXers embrace a paradox of control and non-control. On the one hand, lOXers understand that they face continuous uncertainty and that they cannot control, and cannot accurately predict, significant aspects of the world around them. On the other hand, 10Xers reject the idea that forces outside their con trol or chance events will determine their results; they accept full responsibility for their own fate.

Animating these three core behaviors is a central motivating force, Level 5 ambi tion. See diagram "10X Leadership. Did anything fundamentally change aboutthe company that day? Did the economy make a sud den lurch? Did the marketrally 18 percent that day?

Absolutely nothingofanysignificance had changed for Progressive on October 16, Yet the stock price soaredan astounding 18percent. Did anything fundamentally change about the company that day? Did the economy make a sudden lurch? Did the market crash?

Absolutely nothing of anysignificance had changed for Progressive on January 26, Yet the stock price fell an astounding 19 percent. He re fused to play the game of telling analysts about forthcoming earnings so that they could more reliably "predict" those very same earnings, a behavior Lewis saw as a shortcut alternative to deep analysis and field work.

Lewis also rejected the idea that a company should "manage earnings" by smoothing them out from quarter to quarter so as not to rattle the markets, viewing such shenanigans as undisciplined. But this caused a problem. Because Lewis rejected the "I'll tell you what we'll earn and you predict what we'll earn and we'll both be happy" model, and because he refused to smooth earnings, analysts couldn't consistently predict Progressive's earnings.

As one analyst complained, "I mightas well flip a coin. If Lewis were to continue to refuse to play the game, Progressive's stock price would continue to spike up and down, which could make the company vulnerable to raiders. To ignore that risk wouldbe likea polarexplorer choosing to ignorethe possibility of a freakstorm that could kill him. Yet capitulating would compromise Lewis's principles. What was Lewis to do? Progressive would become the first SEC-listed com pany to publish monthly financial statements.

This would give analysts actual performance data as the quarter progressed, from which they could more easily estimate quarterly results. Other companies had ca pitulated to the guidance game because, well, they felt they had no choice, that theywere imprisoned bythishugeforce out oftheir control. But Lewis freed Progressive from the prison. He accepted that these pressures existed, yet he mitigated their effect byprodigious effort.

Discipline, in essence, isconsistency ofaction—consistency with val ues, consistency with long-term goals, consistency with performance standards, consistency of method, consistency over time.

Discipline is not the same as regimentation. Discipline is not the same as measure ment. Discipline is not the same as hierarchical obedience or adher ence to bureaucratic rules. True discipline requires the independence of mind to reject pressures to conform in ways incompatible with val ues, performance standards, and long-term aspirations. Fora lOXer, the only legitimate form of discipline is self-discipline, having the inner will to do whatever it takes to create a great outcome, no matter how difficult.

They don't overreact to events, succumb to the herd, or leap for alluring—but irrelevant—opportunities. They're capable ofimmense perseverance, unyielding in theirstandards yetdis ciplined enough not to overreach.

Most business CEOs have some level of discipline, but the lOXers operated on an entirely different level. The lOXers, we con cluded, weren't just disciplined; they were fanatics. Lewis's decision to issue monthly financial reports isakinto Amundsen's riding his bicycle from Norway to Spain and eating raw dolphin meat; their behavior fits nowhere on a normal curve. Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines believed passionately in sustain ing a high-spirit, fun-loving, and iconoclastic culture full of passionate people infused with a rebellious "Warrior Spirit.

As the airline grew from a small Texas commuter airline with onlya handful ofairplanes into a major national carrier, it would be increasingly difficult, and increasingly important, to sustain the culture. So, Kelleher himselfbehaved as a fanatic exemplar of the culture. Thompson quote with a slight twist: when the going gets weird, the weird become CEO. But to focus on Kelleher's weirdness as weirdness would miss the point. He wasn't weird to be weird; he was behaving with outlandish consistency to animate the culture, like an impactful actor who stays perfectly in character while on stage.

You might laugh with Kelleher, much like enjoying an Ali press conference, but then find yourself flat on your back if you dared to square off in the ring. By one account, Kelleher showed his competitive ferocity speaking to a gathering of Southwest people, "If someone says they're going to smack us in the face—knock them out, stomp them out, boot them in the ditch, coverthem overand move on to the next thing. Theystarted with values, pur pose, long-term goals, and severe performance standards; and they had the fanaticdiscipline to adhere to them.

If that required them to diverge from normal behavior, then so be it. Theydidn't let external pressures, or even social norms, knock them off course. In an uncertain and unforgiving environment, following the madness of crowds is a good way to get killed.

Andwhy would theyhave such independence of mind? Not because they had more inherent audacity than others, and not because they were more brash and rebellious than others, but because they were more empirical, which brings us to the second of the three core lOXer behaviors.

The doctor suggested that Grove's first step should be to visit the urologist. Most people would do exactly that, but that wasn't Andy Grove's response. Instead, he began reading research articles written by medical scientists for medical scientists.

Grove delved into the data. What did the PSA test really indicate? How did the biochemistry work? What were the statistics ofprostate cancer, and the pros and cons oftreatment options?

He also decided to "test the tests" to validate the data in his readings, sending blood samples to separate labs to calibrate the degree of lab variation in the test. Only afterall this did Grove make an appointment with the urologist. But even then, Grove did not rely on his doctors to create a treatment plan.

After an MRI and a bone scan, he embarked on a more extensive research regimen, going directly to original sources, culling through the primarydata. He obtained all the articles cited in the bibliography of a prostate-cancer reference book, devoured those, then searched for scientific literature that had been published in the six to nine months after the publication of that book, and then obtained even more ma terials that'd been cited in those publications.

Grove maintained an intense CEO schedule by day and his prostate research regimen by night, plotting data, cross-referencing different studies, and trying to make sense of it all.

He learned through his research that there was a raging intellectual war over various cancer-treatment regimens.

Grove realized he ultimately had to draw his own decision trees; plug in his own probability equations; and come to his own data-driven, logical conclusions about his treatment plan. Furthermore, each doctor tends to have a bias toward a particular treatment, influenced by that doctor's own specialties ifyou're a hammer, everything you see looks like a nail.

Grove found proponents of traditional surgery, cryo surgery, external radiation, seed therapy, high-dose-rate radiation, and combination therapies. The dominant conventional wisdom pointed to surgery, but Grove's own direct engagement with the evidence led him to a different choice a combination radiation therapy. In the end, Grove reflected, "I decided to bet on my own charts. Who does he think he is to defy the whole medical establishment?

Had Grove faced a broken arm, with no uncertainty about treatment and zero risk of death, he wouldn't have spent hundreds of hours building charts ofdata. But with significant uncertaintymultipliedbysignificant consequences, Grove did what all our lOXers did, he turned directlyto empirical evidence. Social psychology research indicates that at times of uncer tainty, most people lookto other people-authority figures, peers, group norms-for their primary cues about how to proceed.

They look primarily to empirical evidence. The point here is not to be contrary and independent just for the sake of being contrary and independent. The point is to be more em pirical to buttress your mental independence and validate yourcreative instincts. Having an empirical foundation enables lOXers to make bold, creative moves and bound their risk.

Andy Grove's approach to hiscancer treatment was unusual, even creative, yet deeply grounded in evidence and rigor. In planning for the South Pole expedition, Amundsen set up his base camp in a location no one else had seriously considered, a bold stroke that put him sixty miles closer to the South Pole from the get-go. Everyone believed McMurdo Sound was the best placeto launch a bid for the Pole.

It had been used byotherexplorers and had proven to be a stable place to builda base. ButAmundsen saw anotheroption, the Bay of Whales. Other expedition leaders believed the Bay of Whales to be unstable ice and thereby a foolhardy place to base operations.

Amund sen gathered the source notes and journals from previous expeditions, dating backto Ross's voyage in He poredover the details, immers ing himself in the evidence, noting consistencies and discrepancies, and assessing all the options. He noticed something interesting, some thing missed by others who simply accepted the conventional distrust of the Bay of Whales: a dome-like feature that'd remained in the same place for seven decades.

Amundsen concluded that this particular part of the barrier was in fact a stable location. Wrote Huntford of this deci sion, "Amundsen was the first to draw the obvious conclusion because he was the first to studythe sources Nor did the lOXers exude more raw confidence than the comparison leaders; indeed, the comparison leaders were often brazenly self-confident.

But the lOXers had a much deeper empirical foundation for their deci sions and actions, which gave them well-founded confidence and bounded their risk. Not really. Grove took decisive action on his cancer once he'd immersed himself in the evidence, just as Amundsen took decisive ac tion to land at the Bay ofWhales.

The lOXers don't favor analysis over action; theyfavor empiricism as the foundation for decisive action. Yet despite theirempirical confidence, lOXers never feel safe or com fortable; indeed, they remain afraid—terrified, even—of what the world can throw at them. So, they prepare to meet head-on what they most fear, which brings us to the third corebehavior.

The underwriters and lawyers came prepared to be the purveyors ofdarkness, to engage in a battle with Microsoft leaders to adequately describe the risks investors should consider. Steve Ballmer, then a vice president, rev eled in coming up with scenario after scenario of risk, peril, danger, death, crippling attack, misfortune, and catastrophe. Grim possibilities poured into the conversation, underwriters scribbling away.

Finally, af ter pausing to digest all the possible carnage, one of the underwriters said to Ballmer, "I'd hate to hear you on a bad day. Ballmer had abandoned his studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business to join his friend's adventure. As Ballmer recalled, he did some calcu lations about growth and concluded that Microsoft needed to hire 17 people. Gatesthrew a fit.

Seventeen people? Did Ballmer wantto bank rupt the company? No way! Mi crosoft would never expose itselfto financial ruin! Microsoft should have enough cash on hand to go a year—an entire year! He worried constantly about who might be the next Bill Gates, some freaky high school kid toiling away 22 hours a day in some dingy little office coming up with a lethal torpedo to fire at Microsoft. Written by Gates himself, the memo listed a series of worries and threats— about competitors, technology, intellectual property, legal cases, and Microsoft's customer-support shortcomings—and proclaimed that "our nightmare Anyone who understood Gates would veknown thatthe memo didn't signal a change; he'd always lived in fear, always felt vulnerable, and he would continue to do so.

In , Apple hada spectacularly good year. USA Today reported, "Apple isn't just on the rebound—it's bounding ahead faster than it has since At this rate, the computer maker will finish doubling both sales and net income in just two years. Did he live in fear thatApple's very success might presage pos sible doom? To be fair, Sculley didn't plan to disappear entirely for nine weeks; he'd still attend board meetings, meet with securities analysts, and ap pear at MacWorld, among other activities.

Still, it's quite a contrast to Gates's responding tosuccess by worrying obsessively and issuing night mare memos. Things are booming. So I'm going fishing. Apple continued to hurtle downward until Steve Jobs's return in the late s. Even in calm, clear, positive conditions, lOXers constantly consider the possibility that events could turn against them at any mo ment.

Indeed, they believe that conditions will-absolutely, with percent certainty-turn against them without warning, at some unpredictable point in time, at some highly inconvenient moment. And they'd better be prepared. Custer who led his troops to calamity at Little Big Horn in his office to remind himself that overconfidence leads to doom, or Bill Gates issuing nightmare memos at Microsoft, the lOXers have a con sistent pattern.

By embracing the myriad of possible dangers, they put themselves in a superiorposition to overcome danger. Paranoid behavior is enormously functional if fear is channeled into extensive preparation and calm, clearheaded action, hence our term "productive paranoia.

Gates didn't just sit around writing up nightmare memos; he channeled fear into action by keeping workspace inexpensive; hiring better people; building cash reserves; and working onthe next software release to stay a step ahead, then the next one, and the next one after that.

Like Amundsen with his huge supply buffers, lOXers maintain a conservative financial position, squirreling away cash toprotect against unforeseen disruptions. Like Amundsen sensing great risk inbetting on unproven methods and technologies, they avoid unnecessary risks that could expose them tocalamity.

Like Amundsen, they succeed in an un certain and unforgiving environment through deliberate, methodical, and systematic preparation, always asking, "Whatif? What if? Indeed, as an overall life approach, they worry not about protecting what they have, but creating and building something truly great, bigger than them selves, which brings us to the motivating force behind the three core lOXer behaviors. Early in our research conversations, welabeled them PNFs, shortfor "paranoid, neu rotic freaks.

So, why did people follow them? Because ofa deeply attractive form ofambition: lOXers channel their ego and intensity into something larger and more enduring than themselves.

They're ambitious, to be sure, but for a purpose beyond themselves, be it building a great company, changing the world, or achieving some great object that's ultimately not about them.

In , Business Week published a special report on the relationship between CEO pay and corporate performance. Dane Miller of Biomet one of the 10X companies in our study ranked 1, delivering more value per dollar of his own compensation than any other CEO. And it wasn't just a one-year blip. He sustained a top ranking—sometimes 1, always near the top—for more than a decade in publications like Forbes, Business Week, and ChiefExecutive Magazine.

Keep in mind, the s became the acceleration point when executive compensa tion began spiraling upward, fueled by stock options that gave CEOs massive upside if their companies did well but minimal downside if theircompanies fared poorly. Miller's stock-option package at the time? His employees had options but he did not. He owned his own equity outright so that his personal fortune linked directly to the com pany's performance on the upside and the downside.

Yet Miller showed nothing but gratitude, noting in that hislife was dedicated to two things, Biomet and his family. What's the point of just more and more and more for the sake of more and more and more? Ev ery good-to-great transition in that research began with the emergence of a Level 5 leader who deflected attention from himself, maintained a low profile, and led with inspired standards rather than inspiring personality.

On the surface, some of the lOXers appear to be unlike Level 5 leaders. Kelleher had a zany and flamboyant personality who often drew attention to himself by his antics. So did Peter Lewis. In culling through decades ofdocuments on the Lewis era at Progressive Insurance, we came across a range ofdescriptors: "Just plain strange. Yet despite his eccentricities and sometimes outlandish behavior, Lewis dedicated himself to one goal above all others, making Progres sive a truly great company.

After Lewis engineered a smooth transition to his successor in , Progressive continued to grow, gaining on its competitors, increasing share value, and sustaining a high return on equity. Did he mature, so that he eventually channeled his ego into building a com pany that could be greatwithout him? The lOXers share Level 5 leaders' most important trait: they're in credibly ambitious, but their ambition is first and foremost for the cause, for the company, for the work, not themselves.

Whereas Good to Great focused heavily on the humility aspect of Level 5 leaders, this work highlights their sheerferocity ofwill. Gordon Moore, CEO of Intel from the mids to mids, maintained a low pro file, despite being the primary company builder during Intel's early growth. Moore nonetheless saw Intel's purpose in gigantic terms, rec ognizing how microelectronics would revolutionize nearly every aspect ofsociety.

In , only five years into Intel's history, Moore said, "We are really the revolutionaries in the world today—not the kids with the long hair and beards who were wrecking the schools a few years ago. Every lOXer we studied aimed for much more than just"becoming successful.

They didn't de fine themselves byfame. They didn'tdefine themselves bypower. They defined themselves by impact and contribution and purpose. Even the liber-ambitious Bill Gates, who became the wealthiest person in the world, wasn't driven primarily by gratifying his personal ego. Early in Gates's career, as Microsoft began to gain momentum, one of his friends commented, "All Bill's ego goes into Microsoft.

It's his firstborn child. John Brown of Stryker, for instance, grew up in rural Tennessee, and his family struggled just to have enough food and clothing. Herb Kelleher grew up solidly middle class, his father a manager for the ever-stable Campbell Soup Company.

He studied philosophy and literature at Wesleyan, graduating with honors as student-body president, and then excelled at NYU Law School, joining the law review and landing a clerkship with the Supreme Court ofNew Jersey. With a high school education, he'd man aged to run only a struggling dry-cleaning-equipment business before hestarted USSC. In oneincident at a party after a football game, Sanders leaptto help a friend who'd gotten himself into a street fight with a gang leader. The friend ran away just as Sanders threw himself into the fray.

Sanders lost so much blood that the hospital called in a priest to read him last rites. Nor didwe find thatthey necessarily started as lOXers; some of the lOXers evolved, developing their leadership capabilities over time.

Herb Kelleher made some terrible decisions early in his career, such as buying Muse Air. Peter Lewis followed a huge arc of growth over three decades and also made some enormously costly blunders along the way. George Rathmann, founder of Amgen, didn't exhibit 10X leadership genius from early on.

He'd been denied admission to medi cal school, so he turned to chemistry as Plan B. He spent 21 years at 3M "highly regarded [but] never considered a star" according to Busi ness Week and then joined Litton Industries. He floundered in Litton's chaotic culture of acquisitions and later reflected, "I left before I was escorted out.

We understand these questions, but our research method isn't geared to answer them. That said, webelieve that you do not need answers to these questions to getgoing. The coming chapters map to the three core lOXer behav iors, offering practical methods used by these remarkable leaders to build their companies.

If your enterprise fully engages these concepts and practices, it'll look a whole lot like a company led by a lOXer. So, ourguidance is simple: get to work learning and applying the practical lessons of how lOXers lead, building a truly great organization that de livers superior results, makes a distinctive impact, and achieves lasting endurance. There are lots of individually successful peoplebut very few truly great companies that make a 10X impact.

They are utterly relentless, monomaniacal, un bending in their focus on their quests. They make their bold, creative moves from a sound empirical base. They assume conditions will turn against them, at perhaps the worst pos sible moment. They channel their fear and worry into action, preparing, developing contingency plans, building buffers, and maintaining large margins ofsafety. They have egos, but their egos are channeled into their companies and their purposes, not personal aggrandizement.

True discipline requires mental independence, and an ability to remain consistent in the face of herd instinct and social pressures. Fanatic discipline often means being a nonconformist. Beingempirical doesn't mean being indecisive. By presuming worst-case scenarios and preparing for them, lOXers minimizethe chances that a disruptive event or huge piece ofbad luck will stop them from their creative work. What can you do to turn your weakest into your strongest?

Both companies are small, operating in a fast-growing new industry, spinning out disruptive technologies, thriv ing on rapidly growing customer demand. They have similar product categories, customers, opportunities, and threats; they're a near-perfect matched pair. Company B will achieve 45 percent average annual growth in net income over the same 19 years. Stop and think: which company will you want to invest in?

Most people, including us, would invest in Company B, given no additional information. Now, let's add some more information.

The standard deviation of net income growth which reflects the degree ofvolatility for Company Aover that period will be 15 percent age points. The standard deviation for Company B over the same years will be percentage points. Company Awill maintain consistent and controlled growth, staying below 30 percent for 16 of 19 years yet achieving 20 percent or more almost every year.

Company B will show a much more erratic and uncontrolled growth pattern than Company A. Company B's annual net income growth rate will exceed 30 percent for 13 of 19 years, with net income growth rates ranging from positive percent to negative percent. And you'd be correct. But the amazing thing is how much better.

Company B. For all its extraordinary growth, USSC capitulated to an acquisition, giving up forever its chance to come back as a great company. You re about to embark on a three- thousand-mile walk, from San Diego to the tip of Maine. On the first day, you march 20 miles, making it out of town. On the second day, youmarch 20 miles. And again, on the third day, you march 20 miles, heading into the heat of the desert.

It's hot, more than a hundred degrees, and you want to rest in the cool of your tent. And many will find that part especially interesting.

James C. His year long research into topics such as company growth and sustainability, have resulted in six widely read classics. We have already summarized two of them at getnugget. Morten T. Hansen is a management professor at University of California, Berkeley, with a Ph.

He was ranked by Thinkers50 among the 50 most influential management analysts in the world. Namely, why some companies make the leap from being good to being great, while others, no matter how similar to them, fall in the pit of mediocrity. A decade later, Collins teams up with his colleague Morten T. And, once again, he reaches some interesting, almost counter-intuitive, conclusions, via an exemplary decade-long fieldwork. That great companies are no luckier than good companies; and, that they succeed because, even in the case of chaos and uncertainty, they go on working as if everything is as orderly as ever.

In other words, antifragility is a trait you acquire through a process which combines discipline and preparedness; not something you have in your DNA from the start, or something you get by luck and sheer courage. In , two expeditions moved on a dangerous trip to Antarctica, in an attempt to become the first people to ever reach the South Pole. You see, Roald Amundsen knew where he was going and spend as much time as he could researching Eskimo habits and trying all potential food sources.

Scott wanted to reach the Pole faster, so he carried a lot less weight and used the untested-for-that-terrain motor sledges. Neither Amundsen nor Scott knew what they will face on Antarctica, but the former one did better in guessing and preparing for it. First of all, they were disciplined. They preferred consistency over rapid rise. By setting themselves targets and hitting them precisely year by year, they became immune to external influences.

Secondly, they were bold, only when boldness mattered. Let us refresh your memory. The 10X companies constantly do this, so, when something bad happens, they already have a good strategy. True, if nothing of the sort ever happens, it may be money down the drain. They are perfectly content with meeting them. The new findings The study results were full of provocative surprises. Such as: The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons; they were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid.

Innovation by itself turns out not to be the trump card in a chaotic and uncertain world; more important is the ability to scale innovation, to blend creativity with discipline.

The great companies changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies. The authors challenge conventional wisdom with thought-provoking, sticky, and supremely practical concepts. With a team of more than twenty researchers, Collins and Hansen studied companies that rose to greatness - beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years - in environments characterized by big forces and rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control.

The research team then contrasted these "10X companies" to a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to achieve greatness in similarly extreme environments. Be Great By Choice offers a window into the journey of the author's struggle and acceptance that her life as a lesbian was displeasing to God.

Real power in life lies within the ability to choose, but being able to see and discern with our hearts is a tool sharpened within our spirit. Every word written is a testimony of how God made Kimberly into the woman He desired her to be by renewing her mind, spirit, and heart.

This book explores how the application of her faith developed over time and how she applied it to walk away from homosexuality. God can move in your heart to promote you no matter where you are in life or what you've done. If you find yourself like the author in a position where you feel that good isn't good enough anymore, just know that you can choose to be Greater. The book is of great value to startups and entrepreneurs seeking to build enduringly great companies.

In this ebook, I look at how his concepts of fanatical discipline, productive paranoia, and empirical creativity apply to building a startup that succeeds over the long-term.

To Note: I think that if you're trying to found-n-flip a business, most of these lessons do not apply. Additionally, I don't want readers to come away with the idea that these are the only ways to become an enduring success.

However, we have more evidence to suggest that these ways will work compared to many other approaches. Ridejoy is a company where friendly and talented people can do their best work and make the world a better place. Perhaps some people and companies just get lucky, and our ability to draw useful lessons and conclusions from their success is just not possible. But Collins and his team anticipated the curiosity, at any rate, and devoted an entire chapter to luck. GBC applied a consistent methodology to both pairs of companies to analyze how luck played a role in their outcomes.

About luck events were categorized and studied, e. But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness? The Study For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins.