I’m invited to speak all over the world about what it takes to create raving fans. They always expect me to dive straight into the fancy, fun stuff, like customize packaging and surprise gifts. And I do end up telling them about that (along with AI and red-carpet parties).

But that’s not where I start. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to start with Operational Excellence. I need to talk about their flywheel.

Before combustion engines, the “engine” that would run a mill or factory was a large stone wheel called a flywheel. They sometimes weighed hundreds of pounds. One person pushing on it could barely move it. But if you got enough people pushing for long enough, it would start moving. It might take all your energy for an hour to get one full rotation. But if you kept pushing, you could get a second rotation much faster. And then a third and fourth time, it would spin around, faster and faster. As the momentum built, it took less and less to keep it going. And once you got it moving, you could connect smaller gears to it so they could run off the momentum generated by the flywheel. The visible results were attributed to the small gears moving mill parts, but the energy to do work came from the flywheel.

The flywheel is made up of all the fundamentals of your business—and I’ve learned that great businesses never stop pushing on the flywheel. (Special thanks to Jim Collins for introducing me to this metaphor many years ago when he came to work with my team at Chick-fil-A.)

No matter how many creative things they add to their customer experience, great companies don’t get distracted from Operational Excellence. Because if we lose the flywheel, we lose the trust needed to do all the other things we want to do. If you don’t get this right, nothing else matters.

I’ve spent more than twenty years inside great organizations, watching them closely, and they all have a passion for mastering the fundamentals. None of them think they are beyond the basics, often working with a passion for little details that their competitors roll their eyes at.

I used to be impressed only by innovations in technology or new business models. But while I still think those are cool, these days, I’m even more impressed by a company that nails Operational Excellence every time.

Whatever else you do, never stop pushing on the flywheel.

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