Years ago, Brian, the founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, came up to my desk and said, “I’ve found it!”

And I was thinking, “you’ve found what?”

He explained that he came up with the “formula” to create the “flywheel effect” Jim Collins talks about.

Basically it amounted to this:

F x F x E = Success (being the flywheel effect kicking in)

Focus x Faith x Effort = Success

· Each letter is scored as a percentage out of 100

· You simply ask yourself on any given day:

o What percentage of today was I focused?

o What percentage of faith do I still have in my business?

o What percentage of effort did I put in?

Let’s say you were 50% focused, 50% faith, 50% effort– that only comes out to 12.5% chance of success, which is pretty crumby odds that you’ll succeed.  I wouldn’t bother starting.

But if you’re 80% focused, with 80% faith, and 80% effort on every day, or every week, if your whole business or you were that focused, have that much faith, and had that much effort being put in, then you have a 51.2% chance of success. Better but still not great. You might as well go put all your start-up money on red in Vegas and take one spin of the roulette wheel to see what happens and save yourself years of heartache.

If you want to build a great organization and double your revenue, double your profits and take the amount of days you’re working at and cut them by 50%, you’ve got to start getting in the range of 90 x 90 x 90 – which still only gets you to 72.8% chance of success.

To build the kinds of businesses like we did with College Pro Painters, Boyd Autobody, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, you need 98% focus, 98% faith, and 98% effort – that gives you 94% chance of success.

I’m convinced that not doing this is why 85% of businesses in the United States and Canada fail within the first year.  Most of them don’t wake up in the morning doing this stuff.  They read great books and they don’t put any of it into practice.

Most companies and most employees wake up and start working on email with not a thought put into goals.  Most companies aren’t focused.

Flywheel

In Good To Great, Jim Collins described the Flywheel. In rough this is the analogy:

Are you doing what it takes to get your flywheel turning?

Picture a huge, heavy flywheel.

It’s a massive, metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle. It’s about 100 feet in diameter, 10 feet thick, and it weighs about 25 tons. That flywheel is your company.

Your job is to get that flywheel to move as fast as possible, because momentum — mass times velocity — is what will generate superior economic results over time.

Right now, the flywheel is at a standstill. To get it moving, you make a tremendous effort. You push with all of your might, and finally, you get the flywheel to inch forward. After two or three days of sustained effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn.

You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster. It takes a lot of work, but at last the flywheel makes a second rotation. You keep pushing steadily. It makes three turns, four turns, five, six. With each turn, it moves faster, and then — at some point, you can’t say exactly when — you break through.

The momentum of the heavy wheel kicks in your favor. It spins faster and faster, with its own weight propelling it. You aren’t pushing any harder, but the flywheel is accelerating, its momentum building, its speed increasing.

This is the Flywheel Effect. It’s what it feels like when you’re inside a company that makes the transition from good to great.

***So for the next two weeks when I’m on vacation, let me know in the comments here, what % chance you’re creating to get your flywheel spinning.

Christina Harbridge – an EO’er from SF asked – “What are the top 3 crushing (universal) problems facing an executive team?” These are my thots…

React fast on the information you receive, but don’t overreact. It’s that delicate balance, but you’ve got to do it. I’ve seen people sit on information without making the appropriate changes, leverage it or praise people.

Employees who look to your for guidance, inspiration and leadership get frustrated when they give you real information and you’re too paralyzed to do anything about it.

‘Race to the conflict’ is one of the first management phrases I ever learned. When something bugged me, it was important to act on it right away and address it with the person, but never (NEVER – you email’ers) do it in writing.

It was always better to confront the matter in person. Employees respected me for handling situations this way; it built trust and meant nothing was left to fester. Also, addressing the matter in person allowed them to give their thoughts on the matter, too. Sometimes their perspective gave me a lot of additional information.

Strife causes confusion, and confusion comes when leaders don’t react fast to potential problems.

Greig Clark, my good friend and founder of College Pro Painters, used to say that in order to build a truly great company, it has to be slightly more than a business and slightly less than a religion. It has to be a cult.

The cult-like culture starts with people who have a fantastic cultural fit, who are strong leaders, have proven ability to perform their roles, and will do it at one hundred miles an hour.

To build a cult-like workplace find new employees that raise the average skill set of the entire group.

A business’ hiring process is just like when you’re rebuilding a sports team.  You need to get rid of the wrong players and bring in those that raise the average of the team. A sports team never considers bringing in a bunch of C players – they obsess about bringing in better players to win the cup.

All champion teams have a cult-like environment.  Your company should be structured the same way.  And in our lifetime, the Toronto Blue Jays will win the world series again.  My dad says so!!!

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

This question of the week is from CEO Jamie Scarborough of Sales Talent Agency.  He asked “A lot of companies seem to focus heavily on collecting “logos” like “Fastest Growing Company”, “Best Employer” etc…

I’ve covered the rest of his question & answered it here for you…

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

A cool lesson from the movie ‘The Secret’ is ‘like attracts like.’ It also repels the opposite of like, too.

So, if you’re building a company with a really fun, entrepreneurial culture with a great work/life balance, you’re going to repel boring useless lazy people cubicle drones who have no life (good they’re boring to hang out with).

Herb Keller, founder of Southwest Airlines, got a letter this letter from a customer:
“I need you to stop telling jokes on your airline or I won’t fly with you anymore!”

Herb Keller sent a letter back: “We’ll miss you!”

The practices of Southwest Airlines are so aligned with the vision of their future that they publicly say, “Customers are not #1, our employees are.” And they put it in writing!

For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture.

Blogging is a great way to get your website ranking higher on targeted keywords.

How do you know if you should blog?

Start off by asking yourself these questions: Am I a thought-leader? Do I have the ability to write posts regularly?

If you answered yes to both of those questions, start blogging.

If you’re not interested in leading discussions or don’t have any time to update your blog, don’t bother. It will just become another item on your to-do list and it won’t get the attention it deserves to actually be worthwhile.

When blogging it’s important to post often, and create posts that are short enough so that people can get through them quickly or that have strong content that is compelling. Keep your entries to–at the very most–500 words. Anything more is too long, and people won’t read it.

Also, make sure you’re using your targeted keywords in your blog posts so that when search engines spider the pages, they’ll find the terms.  As an entrepreneur coach & mentor, blogging has been a way for me to share my ideas with a lot more than the 10 CEOs that I’m mentoring today.

What would you like me to write about ?

WordPress.com is the best and easiest format for free blogging.