- Here's what's important. We've allowed the way transitions look from the outside to drive out perception of what they must feel like to those going through them on the inside. From the ouside, they look like dramatic, almost revolutionary breakthroughs. But from the insdie, they feel completely different, more like an organic development process.

- The good-to-great cmopanies had no name for their transformations. There was no launch event, no tag line, no programmatic feel whatsoever. Some executives said that they weren't even aware that a major transformation was under way until they were well into it. It ws often more obvious to them after the fact than at the time.

- The good-to-great companie were subjecty to the same short-term pressures from Wall Street as the comparison companies. Yet, unlike the comparison companies, they had the patience and discipline to follow the buildup-breakthrough flywheel model despite these pressures. And in the end, they attained extraordinary results by Wall Street's own measure of success.

- Clearly, the good-to-great companies did get incredible commitment and alignment - they artfully managed change - but they never really spent much time thinking about it. It was utterly transparent to them. We learned that under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change just melt away. They largely take care of themselves.

- When you let the flywheel do the talking, you don't need to fervently communicate your goals. People can just extrapolate from the momentum of the flywheel for themselves: "Hey, if we just keep doing this, look at where we can go!" As people decide among themselves to turn the fact of potential into the fact of results, the goal almost sets itself.

- Why did the good-to-great companies have a substantially higher succedd rate with acquitisions, especially major acquisitions? The key to their success was that their big acquisitions generally took place after development of the Hedgehog Conecpt and after the flywheel had built significant momentum. They used acquisitions as an accelerator of flywheel momentum, not a creator of it.

*chapter summary*

- Good-to-great transformations often look like dramatic, revolutionsary events to those observing from the outside, but they feel like organic, cumulative processes to people on the inside. The confusion of end outcomes (dramatic resutls) with process (organix and cumulative) skews our perception of what really works over the long haul.

- No matter how dramatic the end result, the good-to-great transformations never happened in one fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment.

- Sustainable transformations follow a predictable pattern of buildup and breakthrough. Like pushing on a giant, heavy flywheel, it takes a lot of effort to get the thing moving at all, but with persistent pushing in a consistent direction over a long period of time, the flywheel builds momentum, eventaully hitting a point of breakthrough.

- The comparison companies followed a different pattern, the doom loop. Rather than accumulating momentum - turh by turn of the flywheel - they tried to skip buildup and jump immediately to reakthrough. Then, with disappointing resultss, they'd lurch back and forth, failing to maintain a consistent direction.

- The compairson comapnies frequenetly tried to create a breakthrough with large, misguided acquisitions. The good-to-great companies, in contrast, principally used large acquisitions after breakthrough, to accelerate momentum in an already fast-spinning flywheel.

**unexpected resutls**

- Those inside the good-to-great companies were often unaware of the magnitude of their transformations at the time; only later, in retrospect, did it become clear. They had no name, tag line, launch event, or program to signify what they were doing at the time.

- The good-to-great leaders spent essentailly no energy trying to "create alignment", "motivate the troops", or "manage change". Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation, and change largely take care of themselves. Alignment principally follows from results and momentum, not the other way around.

- The short-term pressures of Wall Street were not inconsistent with following this model. The flywheel effect is not in conflict with these pressures. Indeed, it is the key to manageing them.