About this episode

The episode discusses principles from Jim Collins' book, focusing on risk management and disciplined goal setting.

Today on The Cutting Onions Podcast, Myles and I discuss two principles from Jim Collins’ excellent book, Great By Choice, published in 2012. Jim has a new book coming out on April 7th titled What To Make of A Life, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it! In today’s conversation, we discussed firing bullets before cannonballs and the 20-mile march. Bullets Before Cannonballs: Imagine two ships trying to hit an enemy target. One captain loads the cannon immediately and fires a massive cannonball. Huge risk. Huge cost. Huge commitment. But the other captain takes a different approach. He fires a bullet first. A small test shot. Then another. And another. And when those bullets start hitting the target… Then he loads the cannon and fires the cannonball. Jim Collins defines a bullet like this: ‘A bullet is a low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiment.’ In the context of the restaurant/hospitality industry, it looks like running pilots (not systemwide rollouts without testing), and then gathering data and feedback. Those are bullets. Then they scaled it and fired the cannonball. The 20-mile march story Jim Collins touches on is fascinating. He tells the story of two explorers…

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