Last week we discussed the overview of Chapter 2 from the book Great by Choice. We discovered how 10Xers turned their weakest behaviors into their strongest. This week I would like to move on to Chapter 3: 20 Mile March.
When Jim Collins began his study, he and his team thought they might see 10X winners respond to a volatile, fast-changing world full of new opportunities by pursuing aggressive growth and making radical, big leaps, catching and riding the Next Big Wave, time and again. And yes, they did grow, and they did pursue spectacular opportunities as they grew. But the less successful comparison cases pursued much more aggressive growth and undertook big-leap, radical-change adventures to a much greater degree than the 10X winners. The 10X cases exemplified what Collins and his team came to call the 20 Mile March concept, hitting stepwise performance markers with great consistency over a long period of time, and the comparison cases did not.
For example, when John Brown became CEO of Stryker in 1977, he deliberately set a performance benchmark to drive consistent progress: Stryker would achieve 20 percent net income growth every year. This was more than a mere target, or a wish, or a hope, or a dream, or a vision. It was to use Brown’s own words, “the law.” He ingrained “the law” into the company’s culture, making it a way of life.
Imagine going to a big company meeting. You walk into the main ballroom to find sales regions arranged by performance. Those in regions that achieved their 20 Mile March get seating assignments at the front of the room; those that fell behind find themselves assigned to tables in the back of the room.
From the time John Brown became CEO in 1977 through 1998 and excluding a 1990 extraordinary gain, Stryker hit its 20 Mile March goal more than 90 percent of the time. Yet for all this self-imposed pressure, Stryker had an equally important self-imposed constraint: to never go too far, to never grow too much in a single year. According to the Wall Street Transcript, some observers criticized Brown for not being more aggressive. Brown, however, consistently chose to maintain the 20 Mile March, regardless of criticism urging him to grow Stryker at a faster pace in boom years.
The 20 Mile March is more than a philosophy. It’s about having concrete, clear, intelligent, and rigorously pursued performance mechanisms that keep you on track. The 20 Mile March creates two types of self-imposed discomfort: (1) the discomfort of unwavering commitment to high performance in difficult conditions, and (2) the discomfort of holding back in good conditions.
Some people believe that a world characterized by radical change and disruptive forces no longer favors those who engage in consistent 20 Mile Marching. Yet the great irony is that when Collins and his team examined just this type of out-of-control, fast-paced environment, they found that every 10X company exemplified the 20 Mile March principle during the era they studied. The evidence shows that the 10X companies embraced a 20 Mile March early, long before they were big companies.
In 29 events in which companies such as Stryker, Southwest Airlines, Intel, and Progressive 20 Mile Marched into turbulent industry episode, they came out of the turbulence with a good outcome in every single instance, without exception, 29 of 29, 100 percent of the time. However, in 23 events in which companies failed to 20 Mile March heading into a turbulent industry episode, they emerged from the turbulent episode with a good outcome only 2 out of 23 times.
The following are the key points found at the end of Chapter 3 to help you better understand the effectiveness and importance of 20 Mile Marching:
- The 20 Mile March was a distinguishing factor, to an overwhelming degree, between the 10X companies and the comparison companies in our research.
- To 20 Mile March requires hitting specified performance markers with great consistency over a long period of time. It requires two distinct types of discomfort, delivering high performance in difficult times and holding back in good times.
- A good 20 Mile March has the following seven characteristics:
1. Clear performance markers.
2. Self-imposed constraints.
3. Appropriate to the specific enterprise.
4. Largely within the company’s control to achieve.
5. A proper timeframe – long enough to manage, yet short enough to have teeth.
6. Imposed by the company upon itself.
7. Achieved with high consistency. - A 20 Mile March needn’t be financial. You can have a creative march, a learning march, a service-improvement march, or any other type of march, as long as it has the primary characteristics of a good 20 Mile March.
- The 20 Mile March builds confidence. By adhering to a 20 Mile March, no matter what challenges and unexpected shocks you encounter, you prove to yourself and your enterprise that performance is not determined by your conditions but largely by your own actions.
- Failing to 20 Mile March leaves an organization more exposed to turbulent events. Every comparison case had at least one episode of slamming into a difficult time without having the discipline of a 20 Mile March in place, which resulted in a major setback or catastrophe.
- The 20 Mile March helps you exert self-control in an out-of-control environment.
- 10X winners set their own 20 Mile March, appropriate to their own enterprise; they don’t let outside pressures define it for them.
- A company can always adopt 20 Mile March discipline even if it hasn’t had such discipline earlier in its history, as Genentech did under Levinson.
What is your 20 Mile March, something that you can commit to achieving for 15 to 30 years with as much consistency as Stryker, Southwest Airlines, Intel, and Progressive?



