687: Jim Collins - What To Make of a Life, The 3 Types of Luck, Inflection Points, Cliffs, Encodings, Navigating the Fog, the Art of Getting People To Want To Do What Must Be Done, and Reconnecting with an Old Friend

**Ryan Hawk** (0:00)
My next book, The Price of Becoming, comes out soon. And in the meantime, I have sent it to some leaders, thinkers, and authors that I really look up to. One of them is Brent B. Shore. And this is what Brent said about The Price of Becoming. Quote, I've been on Ryan's podcast twice, and both times his preparation was exceptional. What stood out was that he'd actually thought deeply about the messy parts. And that's what The Price of Becoming is about. After interviewing so many elite performers, Ryan has identified the unglamorous compound practices that lead to sustained excellence. The best leaders know how messy they are. They acknowledge their imperfections. They do the work no one sees. That's what this book shows you. Exactly what that work looks like and how you can do it too. Again, that's Brent B. Schor, Founder, CEO of Permanent Equity and Best Selling Author. I'd love it if you would preorder The Price of Becoming. You can do it at learningleader.com or go straight to Amazon and preorder The Price of Becoming. Thank you so much for your support.
Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Jim Collins is the author of some of the most influential books ever written, like Good to Great, Built to Last, and Great by Choice, just to name a few. His concepts have become part of all leaders vocabulary, like level five leadership, the flywheel, first two, then what, the hedgehog concept. He spent more than a decade at Stanford as a professor, and has advised CEOs, four-star generals, and heads of state. His new book is called What to Make of a Life, Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative. During our conversation, we discuss how Jim's grandfather, Jimmy Collins, who was a test pilot and an author, shaped how Jim thinks about courage and living fully. Then we discuss what Jim calls encodings, and why it's so important that you discover yours. Then we get into what the three-by-three reflective practice is and why Jim uses it to sustain excellence across decades. Now, this is a very special one for me. We flew to Boulder to record with him in person, and I'm so glad that we did. As you'll hear, this one gets very personal and is quite emotional at the end. Jim's super kind words mean the world to me. He is one of my heroes. He is a great example of why you should meet your heroes.
Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Jim Collins.
I loved reading about your namesake, Jimmy Collins, your grandfather and Dolores, your grandmother. There's a lot there. Can you tell me the story of Jimmy Collins?

**Jim Collins** (3:29)
Well, Jimmy Collins is my namesake. And as you know, he comes at the end of the book, but basically he was one of the early test pilots. And he and my grandmother, Dolores, met and got married four days after they first met. He was flying across country, landed at Wichita for fuel. My grandmother was from Oklahoma. She was working at the Wichita Airport. Four days later, they were married, which of course leads to a series of sequences that I exist. And my grandfather was, in fact, his original memoir at the bottom of it says, To True Stuff of an Airman or something like that. And it was kind of the first sort of right stuff kind of book that had been written. And he was writing it in chapters serialized by the Saturday Evening Post. He was testing a variety of planes. And then in 1935, my grandfather I think was 30, he died in a test crash. He was testing a Navy plane, a Navy fighter, I believe, and he was doing a series of dives over Long Island. And the plane failed and he died.
As he was writing the chapters of the book, they were coming out in different publications, I think mainly the Saturday Evening Post. He told my grandmother that if he died, which was not an unlikely outcome given test piloting in that era, that he had already written the last chapter of the book. And it was in a desk drawer. And that if he died, she was to go get the last chapter, pull it out, put it on the back of all the other chapters and publish it as a full book. So, my grandfather crashes, dies.
My grandmother after the service goes to the desk drawer, pulls out the last chapter and reads the title of the last chapter, which is I am Dead.