More than 15 years ago the management writer Jim Collins introduced the flywheel as a metaphor for the enduring power of strong business leadership. A company doesn’t shift from “good to great” overnight, he wrote in his 2001 book of that name. Rather, it achieves excellence by “relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel in one direction, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.” And once that flywheel starts spinning, Collins said, it tends to keep going.
A version of this article appeared in the November–December 2017 issue (pp.66–77) of Harvard Business Review.
