A Better Way to Apply Jim Collin’s Flywheel

The Collins-Inspired Kreek Flywheel Process:

Strategic Business Coaching for Lasting Momentum

In Turning the Flywheel, Jim Collins makes it clear: history doesn’t lie. Great companies don’t stop once they’ve started building momentum—they keep going. Big winners take their flywheel from 10 turns to a billion, while mediocre companies hit 10 turns, lose focus, and switch gears.

Collins puts it bluntly: "When you reach a hundred turns, push for a thousand. Then ten thousand. Then a million.” The key is to apply discipline and creativity to every turn, treating each one like it’s the first—relentlessly building momentum. This is how you avoid being one of those companies that fizzles out (How the Mighty Fall) and instead become one of the rare few that go from Good to Great and stay Built to Last.

This process is designed to help your business build sustainable success by harnessing the power of the Flywheel—a framework that ensures continuous improvement and growth through disciplined action.

Why The Kreek Flywheel Process?

This approach is designed to be highly applicable, pragmatic and useful. A flywheel built on the principles of disciplined thought and action, ensures that your business doesn’t just achieve greatness—it sustains it. With a focus on practical application and continuous learning, we build a Flywheel that keeps turning, ensuring lasting results.

Here’s the simple process to create your Flywheel:

1. Replicable Wins: List out your consistent successes. What have you done over and over that works?
2. Failures Count Too: Make a list of your failures. Yep, they’re important—there’s often more to learn from them than from your wins.
3. Compare & Contrast: What do your successes and failures tell you? What patterns emerge? What elements should be part of your Flywheel?
4. Sketch It Out: Draw your Flywheel. Identify each stage and how one success feeds into the next, creating a loop that gains speed with each turn.
5. Simplify: Keep it simple—four to six key components. Any more than that, and you’re just over-complicating things.
6. Test It: Use your past results to test and tweak the Flywheel until it’s driving your biggest wins and avoiding your biggest pitfalls.

Remember: the key to the Flywheel is consistency. Don’t reinvent the wheel—keep cranking it with discipline and creativity, and watch your results compound.

3 Simple Examples

Here are three diverse and simple examples of Flywheels that show how the concept works across different fields:

1. Customer Loyalty Flywheel (Retail)

• Great Product → Drives Positive Customer Reviews → Leads to Increased Word-of-Mouth → Attracts More Customers → Fuels Higher Sales → Enables Product Improvement → Repeat.
• Key Insight: Every turn of this Flywheel builds trust and satisfaction, attracting more loyal customers who feed the momentum.

2. Content Creation Flywheel (Personal Brand/Blogging)

• Create High-Quality Content → Drives Audience Engagement (Likes, Comments) → Boosts Search Engine Visibility → Increases Website Traffic → Attracts New Followers → Monetize Audience → Use Revenue to Create More High-Quality Content → Repeat.
• Key Insight: Consistently creating content increases visibility and engagement, fueling growth and revenue with each cycle.

3. Employee Development Flywheel (Corporate)

• Invest in Employee Training → Improves Employee Skills & Satisfaction → Increases Productivity and Innovation → Results in Higher Business Performance → Allows for More Resources to Invest in Training → Repeat.
• Key Insight: Each turn of the Flywheel strengthens your team, boosting both morale and performance, leading to business success.

These examples show how a Flywheel, once in motion, builds momentum with each cycle, driving continuous improvement and growth in different industries.

Collins’ Flywheel Framework Explained:

Collins’ framework for moving from Good to Great is built on three key stages:

1. Disciplined People:
   • Level 5 Leadership: Leadership that combines humility with fierce resolve.
   • First Who, Then What: Get the right people on the bus (in your organization) before deciding where to drive it.
2. Disciplined Thought:
   • Confront the Brutal Facts: Accept harsh realities while maintaining faith in your success.
   • The Hedgehog Concept: Focus on what you can be the best in the world at, what drives your economic engine, and what you’re deeply passionate about.
3. Disciplined Action:
   • Culture of Discipline: A blend of entrepreneurial spirit and disciplined execution.
   • Technology Accelerators: Use technology as a tool to accelerate growth, not as the driving force.

Linking the Flywheel to These Stages:

Each of these stages feeds into the Flywheel, giving it the momentum to spin faster and faster as you maintain discipline and focus on key elements.

1. Disciplined People → Flywheel Start:
   • The foundation of the Flywheel starts with the right people—those who are committed to excellence (Level 5 Leadership). You don't start turning the Flywheel without the right people in place who understand and embody the vision. This creates a solid base to begin building momentum.
2. Disciplined Thought → Flywheel Momentum:
   • Once you have the right team, you need disciplined thought. This is where confronting brutal facts and focusing on the Hedgehog Concept come into play. Identifying what you can excel at, while staying realistic, provides direction for each turn of the Flywheel. Your Flywheel gains momentum as your team focuses on what truly matters, consistently.
3. Disciplined Action → Flywheel Acceleration:
   • With disciplined action, your Flywheel really picks up speed. A Culture of Discipline ensures that every step is executed with precision, and Technology Accelerators help you do it faster and more efficiently. By continuously applying these actions, you increase the speed and power of the Flywheel.

The Flywheel framework is a reflection of disciplined execution. First, you get the right people (Disciplined People), focus them on the right goals (Disciplined Thought), and then execute relentlessly (Disciplined Action). With each successful cycle, the Flywheel spins faster, creating sustained momentum and long-term success.

Let’s link each of the case examples to the three stages of Collins' Flywheel framework—Disciplined People, Disciplined Thought, and Disciplined Action. I’ll explain how each fits into the framework:

1. Customer Loyalty Flywheel (Retail)

• Disciplined People (Level 5 Leadership, First Who, Then What):
  • The starting point of this flywheel is having a great product, which can only happen with the right people in place. Leaders need to ensure they have skilled and motivated individuals who understand customer needs and are dedicated to delivering high-quality products. They know the “who” (right people) before defining “what” (the product). Leadership plays a crucial role in setting the standard for product quality and customer service.
• Disciplined Thought (Confront Brutal Facts, Hedgehog Concept):
  • The business confronts the brutal facts: customer satisfaction drives success. The focus here (Hedgehog Concept) is on creating positive customer reviews and leveraging word-of-mouth—the business understands that its core competitive advantage lies in customer loyalty. The disciplined thought revolves around continuously improving the product to ensure customers keep coming back.
• Disciplined Action (Culture of Discipline, Technology Accelerators):
  • As the company executes, it builds a Culture of Discipline around customer feedback and continuous product improvement. They gather data on customer reviews and use technology to improve product offerings and refine marketing efforts, further fueling word-of-mouth. This cycle of improvement enables each turn of the Flywheel to gain more momentum, driving higher sales and loyalty.

2. Content Creation Flywheel (Personal Brand/Blogging)

• Disciplined People (Level 5 Leadership, First Who, Then What):
  • The flywheel begins with creating high-quality content. This requires discipline and a clear focus from the individual or team. A personal brand or blog thrives when creators understand their audience deeply, positioning themselves as thought leaders (Level 5 Leadership). The focus is on delivering value before monetizing, ensuring content aligns with audience needs.
• Disciplined Thought (Confront Brutal Facts, Hedgehog Concept):
  • Here, the brutal fact is that not all content resonates equally. The Hedgehog Concept is the focus on what type of content drives the most engagement and visibility. The discipline comes from analyzing which pieces generate the most audience engagement and traffic, then doubling down on those themes.
• Disciplined Action (Culture of Discipline, Technology Accelerators):
  • Disciplined content creators maintain a regular publishing schedule (Culture of Discipline) and use technology accelerators like SEO, social media algorithms, and analytics tools to increase search engine visibility and traffic. The monetization cycle allows them to reinvest in better content, which drives the Flywheel faster with each turn.

3. Employee Development Flywheel (Corporate)

• Disciplined People (Level 5 Leadership, First Who, Then What):
  • This flywheel starts with investing in employee training. The organization focuses on hiring the right people—those who value learning and growth. Level 5 leadership ensures that employee development is a priority, creating a culture where people are motivated to improve, knowing that growth benefits the entire organization.
• Disciplined Thought (Confront Brutal Facts, Hedgehog Concept):
  • The business confronts the fact that without skilled employees, productivity suffers. The Hedgehog Concept in this case revolves around the understanding that skilled, engaged employees drive innovation and productivity. The disciplined thought process focuses on developing the right training programs that will have the biggest impact on performance.
• Disciplined Action (Culture of Discipline, Technology Accelerators):
  • The company builds a Culture of Discipline around ongoing employee development. Training programs are continually improved, and the results (higher skills and productivity) are measured. Technology accelerators such as online training platforms or AI-driven learning tools allow for scalable, efficient training. As employees become more skilled, their performance improves, fueling the Flywheel further by reinvesting resources into more training.

Summary of Linkages:

• Each flywheel starts with the right people (Disciplined People) who are motivated to build momentum through consistent actions (whether it’s great products, high-quality content, or employee development).
• The Hedgehog Concept and Brutal Facts (Disciplined Thought) keep each flywheel focused on what matters—whether that’s customer loyalty, content that resonates, or skilled employees driving performance.
• Finally, Disciplined Action ensures that the organization stays on track, leveraging technology accelerators to keep the Flywheel moving faster with each turn, creating compounding results over time.

By aligning these three stages with specific actions, each flywheel becomes a powerful tool for building sustained momentum and success.