Last week I introduced Chapter 1 from the book Great by Choice by Jim Collins. This week I would like to continue our discussion on this superb book and focus on Chapter 2: 10Xers, which explains how people become 10Xers.

We begin by taking a look at the story of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott.

In October 1911, two teams of adventurers made their final preparations in their quest to be the first people in modern history to reach the South Pole. For one team, it would be a race to victory and a safe return home. For members of the second team, it would be a devastating defeat, reaching the Pole only to find the wind-whipped flags of their rivals planted 34 days earlier, followed by a race for their lives – a race that they lost in the end.

It was a near-perfect matched pair. There were two expedition leaders – Roald Amundsen, the winner, and Robert Falcon Scott, the loser – of similar ages and with comparable experience. Amundsen led the first successful journey through the Northwest Passage and joined the first expedition to spend the winter in Antarctica; Scott led a South Pole expedition in 1902, reaching 82 degrees South. Amundsen and Scott started their respective journeys for the Pole within days of each other, both facing an uncertain and unforgiving environment and no means of communication. One leader led his team to victory and safety. The other led his team to defeat and death.

What separated these two men? Why did one achieve spectacular success in such an extreme set of conditions, while the other failed even to survive? It’s a fascinating question and a vivid analogy for our overall topic. Here were two leaders, both on quests for extreme achievement in an extreme environment. And it turns out that the 10X business leaders in Collins’ research behaved very much like Amundsen and the comparison leaders behaved much more like Scott.

Amundsen and Scott achieved dramatically different outcomes not because they faced dramatically different circumstances. In the first 34 days of their respective expeditions, Amundsen and Scott had exactly the same ratio, 56 percent, of good days to bad days of weather. If they faced the same environment in the same year with the same goal, the causes of their respective success and failure simply cannot be the environment. They had divergent outcomes principally because they displayed very different behaviors.

This was also true for the leaders in Collins research study. Like Amundsen and Scott, their matched pairs were vulnerable to the same environments at the same time. Yet some leaders proved themselves to be 10Xers while leaders on the other side of the pair did not. “10Xers” (pronounced “ten-EX-ers”) is Collins term for the people who built the 10X companies. In the research he and his team did, they observed that the 10Xers shared a set of behavioral traits that distinguished them from the comparison leaders. In this chapter they introduce those traits, and in subsequent chapters they describe how their 10Xers led and built successful companies consistent with them.

So, how did the 10Xers distinguish themselves? First, 10Xers embrace a paradox of control and non-control. 10Xers then bring this idea to life by a triad of core behaviors: fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia. Animating these three core behaviors is a central motivating force, Level 5 ambition. (See diagram below “10X Leadership.”) These behavioral traits, which they introduce in the remainder of chapter 2, correlate with achieving 10X results in chaotic and uncertain environments. Fanatic discipline keeps 10X enterprises on track, empirical creativity keeps them vibrant, productive paranoia keeps them alive, and Level 5 ambition provides inspired motivation.

The following are the key points found at the end of Chapter 2 to help you better understand the effectiveness and importance of 10Xers:

• Clear-eyed and stoic, 10Xers accept, without complaint, that they face forces beyond their control, that they cannot accurately predict events, and that nothing is certain; yet they utterly reject the idea that luck, chaos, or any other external factor will determine whether they succeed or fail.
• 10Xers display three core behaviors that, in combination, distinguish them from the leaders of the less successful comparison companies:
  ° Fanatic discipline: 10Xers display extreme consistency of action – consistency with values, goals, performance standards, and methods. They are utterly relentless, monomaniacal, unbending in their focus on their quests.
  ° Empirical creativity: When faced with uncertainty, 10Xers do not look primarily to other people, conventional wisdom, authority figures, or peers for direction; they look primarily to empirical evidence. They rely upon direct observation, practical experimentation, and direct engagement with tangible evidence. They make their bold, creative moves from a sound empirical base.
  ° Productive paranoia: 10Xers maintain hypervigilance, staying highly attuned to threats and changes in their environment, even when – especially when – all’s going well. They assume conditions will turn against them, at perhaps the worst possible moment. They channel their fear and worry into action, preparing, developing contingency plans, building buffers, and maintaining large margins of safety.
• Underlying the three core 10Xer behaviors is a motivating force: passion and ambition for a cause or company larger than themselves. They have egos, but their egos are channeled into their companies and their purposes, not personal aggrandizement.

As you think about your career – indeed, your life – ask yourself one key question: Rank-order the core 10Xer behaviors – fanatical discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoid – from your strongest to weakest. What can you do to turn your weakest into your strongest?