Jim Collins (jimcollins.com) is a student and teacher of what makes great companies tick, and a Socratic advisor to leaders in the business and social sectors. He has authored or coauthored eight books that have together sold 10+ million copies worldwide, including Good to Great, Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Built to Last, How the Mighty Fall, Great by Choice, and his newest work, Turning the Flywheel.

Driven by a relentless curiosity, Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he received the Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

In 2017, Forbes selected Jim as one of the 100 Greatest Living Business Minds.

Jim is also an avid rock climber and has completed single-day ascents of El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite Valley.

Intro [00:00]
Jim asks me a few questions:
What was the subject of my Princeton senior thesis? [08:24]
How do I go about acquiring a new language? [09:29]
Does language constrain or enhance the concepts we develop? [11:54]
What was it like to take a writing class from John McPhee [15:40]
Conceptual vessels [24:29]
The Level 5 Leadership hierarchy [30:27]
Among leaders, how did Jim and his team use research data to identify genuine humility and separate it from false humility? [35:25]
Inspiring students and why Jim keeps a stopwatch with three timers in his pocket [40:26]
Jim's time tracking spreadsheet [47:32]
The relentless pursuit of “discipline in service of creativity” [52:45]
The crucial 3 components for living the kind of life Jim wants to lead [56:27]
How does Jim define what counts as “creative?” [59:27]
Sleep and the benefits of napping [1:07:10]
What is the bug book, and how does it tie in with the Hedgehog Concept? [1:15:01]
"Who luck” and why Jim feels his life has really just begun at age 61. [1:24:26]
On making sure time with mentors is a win-win [1:29:07]
What big question does Jim think Peter Drucker was trying to answer? [1:33:42]
Two important lessons Jim learned from Peter Drucker [1:35:32]
What is a flywheel? [1:00:00]
How the team at Amazon elaborated on Good to Great’s flywheel principle [1:44:59]
What can people expect from the Turning the Flywheel monograph? [1:50:25]
What is Jim’s own flywheel? Where does it start, and what fuels its perpetuation? [1:53:21]
Vicious circles vs. virtuous cycles [1:55:42]
Doom loop vs. flywheel [1:57:36]
The best decision Jim ever made [2:04:18]
Fire bullets before you fire cannonballs. [2:06:00]
When does the option of a safety net have a negative value? [2:08:57]
Parting thoughts. [2:11:51]

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About Tim Ferriss:
Tim Ferriss is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 200 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running.

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