Flywheel and Doom Loop

Flywheel and Doom Loop 

James Brinkley Snr

Liberty University

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I remember well that Gillette followed the concept of Fly wheel while the Warner-Lambert followed the doom loop vicious circle. Gillette worked its way from good to great slowly and carefully. It had planned course of action. It used innovation and unity of purpose to achieve breakthrough. After breakthrough, it accelerated its success through carefully planned and implemented acquisitions.  In essence, Gillette made large acquisitions after breakthrough to fuel it’s the momentum of its already fast- whirling flywheel. O the contrary, Warner-Lambert tried to achieve breakthrough by skipping the buildup phase. It made many misguided massive acquisitions in an attempt to create a breakthrough. It also changed CEOs frequently so as to create that a sudden, sharp breakthrough. However, each CEO came with his own ideology and slowed or halted the momentum set by his predecessor. It lacked a direction of purpose and made decisions which made it to lurch back and forth and failed terribly. In short, Gillette’s success was characterized by slow but steady systematic groundwork intrinsic in the flywheel while Warner-Lambert assumed radical and abrupt revolutionary changes rather than evolutionary changes in the firm. The end results were a complete opposite of each other. Gillette succeeded while Warner-Lambert ended up being acquired itself in the year 2000 (LaMattina, 2011).

The contrast teaches that many organization fail because of following the vicious circle of the doom loop. Managers of companies which fall into the doom loop tend to skip buildup and try to jump straight into the breakthrough (Collins, 2001). These managers make radical changes, implement huge programs, staged misguided revolutions and perform chronic restructuring in succession in attempt to create a breakthrough (Collins and Porras, 2005). Instead of confronting the brutal facts, managers in companies which fail to transform from good to great opt to engage in management hoopla.  Due to the constant ill-advised and imprudent changes that occur, a lot of time is spent trying to motivate and win the trust of not only the employees but also the customers and the general public.