How to Increase the momentum of your business flywheel by 10x?
This article is the 1st part of the three-part series on Increasing the 10x momentum of your Flywheel by using the GREASE framework. Here is Part 2 & Part 3 of the series.
Jim Collins introduced the concept of the Flywheel Effect in his book Good To Great. He quotes, “In building a great company, there is no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy Flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.”
This article is about increasing the momentum of your business flywheel by 10x. We will introduce the GREASE framework that works complementary to Jim Collins Flywheel effect. Let’s assume you have crossed the first hurdle of architecting the Flywheel for your company/organization. Let’s say you manage to get it turning with decent momentum, but if you need to achieve your grand vision or goals faster, you need to increase the momentum 10x and stay ahead of the competition. How do you do it?
Picture a huge, heavy mechanical flywheel — a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, how would you increase the momentum? You have to reduce friction. How would you reduce friction? You apply grease (lubricant). Now suppose if I say do the same thing for your virtual business flywheel, would you be surprised?
Introducing the GREASE framework
How does the GREASE framework fit in your overall organization design?
Applying the GREASE framework with a data-driven approach positively impacts all the four key pillars (People, Team, Process, System) of any engineering-driven company/organization. Instilling the Growth Mindset in people helps better Alignment across teams and leads to Execution Effectiveness. Once you achieve effective execution, you make it your Rhythm of Business (operational cadence). Once an organization is executing effectively in the right operational rhythm, we can strive for the process, infrastructure, and metrics Standardization across the organization and achieve maximum Efficiency.
To summarize, applying GREASE helps reduce friction, increase momentum 10x, and enable any organization to become operationally excellent. An operationally excellent organization delivers products/features out of its assembly line (product delivery lifecycle) faster to customers and keep the momentum going. A Chief Of Staff or Program Management / Operations function in your organization can help lead this change, but it’s going to be a collaborative effort.
In Part 2 & Part 3, we will cover how the GREASE framework helps in different stages of organizational transformation in helping achieve 10x momentum. We will also get into the tactics and action plans on how to apply GREASE across the four pillars (People, Team, Process, System) and achieve 10x momentum. Please note, this three-part series is mostly a reflection of my 15+ years of working in technology companies. These are my personal views and not a representation of the companies I have worked for. I would appreciate your feedback, thoughts, and questions on the above.
If you are an executive/leader looking to introduce GREASE and increase momentum 10x in your company/organization, happy to help! Ping me @ pratheepkrishna@gmail.com or connect me on LinkedIn
