The 20-Mile March Approach to Preparation

I am currently reading Jim Collins’ new book, Great by Choice.  For those of you who subscribe to FORTUNE magazine, you may have read the excerpt from the book in the October 17^th edition.  If you have enjoyed any of his previous work, I highly recommend you check it out.  Jim Collins began the research for this book nine years ago in 2002 in an effort to determine why some companies thrive in uncertainty and even chaos when others do not.  Jim Collins and his co-author started from an initial list of over 20,000 companies and through a series of eleven layers of cuts, they came up with only seven companies that met all of their tests.  They labeled these companies “10Xers” because in every case, these companies beat their industry index by at least 10 times.  The book goes on to describe, through a series of concepts, why these seven companies were able to do what they did among a very trying and tumultuous time in the economy over the last nine years.