Rifles or Cannonballs: What do you fire?
Great by Choice, written by Jim Collins and Morton Hansen, is the follow up to, Good to Great. ‘Chapter 4: Fire Bullets; then Cannonballs’ is a wonderful way to remember that experimentation and prototypes are extraordinarily valuable when seeking improvements and progress.
In the 18th Century, wise captains did not waste their cannonballs. They would shoot rifle bullets. By using the rifle shots, which were low cost, low risk and low distraction, they could test or experiment on the strength of the wind, the distance of the ship and its rate of speed.
Once they had hit the target with the experimental rifle shots, they would then zero in their cannonballs. This meant that the gunners did not have to have brilliant skills or insights; they simply needed to pursue the practice of low cost experimentation.
Great by Choice companies are not particularly creative; just creative enough, and they fire a lot of rifle shots to experiment and learn, and it’s through the learning that they make continuous, cumulative progress and get ten times ahead of their industry peers.
Too often, once a good idea does come along, the undisciplined captain fires cannonballs. We call these un-calibrated cannonballs because we have no idea if they’ll hit a target. An un-calibrated cannonball can lead to calamity – probably more often than a success. The missed venture burns huge resources, which will limit the ability to fund future experiments.
The failed venture will temper creative and risk taking behaviours into caution. ‘I tried that kind of thing once; we don’t do a lot of experimenting here anymore. We don’t try new things here. We wait until someone else has proven it and gotten it right, and then we might try to copy them.’
A rifle shot or a test or a prototype is a low cost, low risk, low distraction activity that you can conduct fairly quickly and learn from so that you can recalibrate the next rifle shot, eventually hit the target and decide how to fire the cannonball. The purpose of rifle shot successes is to bring together and marry relentless discipline and creativity.
If you would like our ‘Rifle Shot and Cannonball Business Assessment’ tool, then drop JT an email: [email protected]
Justin is the Managing Director of Active Management, which he began January 2004. He offers coaching to businesses worldwide in everything from start up and design to marketing and sales systems. Justin also facilitates four Australian and New Zealand ‘fitness industry roundtables’ events, which allows him to see a huge cross section of business models.