107. Bullets Before Cannonballs & The 20-Mile March cover art

107. Bullets Before Cannonballs & The 20-Mile March

107. Bullets Before Cannonballs & The 20-Mile March

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 Today on The Cutting Onions Podcast, Myles and I discuss two principles from Jim Collins’ excellent book, Great By Choice, published in 2012. Jim has a new book coming out on April 7th titled What To Make of A Life, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it!In today’s conversation, we discussed firing bullets before cannonballs and the 20-mile march.
Bullets Before Cannonballs:
Imagine two ships trying to hit an enemy target.One captain loads the cannon immediately and fires a massive cannonball.Huge risk. Huge cost. Huge commitment.But the other captain takes a different approach.He fires a bullet first.A small test shot.Then another.And another. And when those bullets start hitting the target… Then he loads the cannon and fires the cannonball.Jim Collins defines a bullet like this:‘A bullet is a low-cost, low-risk, low-distraction experiment.’
In the context of the restaurant/hospitality industry, it looks like running pilots (not systemwide rollouts without testing), and then gathering data and feedback. Those are bullets.
Then they scaled it and fired the cannonball.The 20-mile march story Jim Collins touches on is fascinating. He tells the story of two explorers racing to the South Pole: ⁠Roald Amundsen⁠ and ⁠Robert Falcon Scott⁠.Amundsen approached the expedition with incredible discipline.
  • He committed to marching 20 miles every single day.
  • If the weather was beautiful, they marched 20 miles.
  • If the weather was brutal, they marched 20 miles.
  • No heroics. No overextending.

Just disciplined progress.
Scott’s team took the opposite approach.
  • When conditions were good, they pushed themselves to exhaustion.
  • When conditions were bad, they stopped.
  • And that lack of consistency ultimately cost them the race—and tragically, their lives.

So what does this have to do with leadership?Great leaders combine two things:
  1. They fire bullets before cannonballs.
  2. And they march 20 miles every day.

They test ideas before committing huge resources.And they build disciplined, consistent progress over time.That combination—experimentation and discipline—is what allows organizations to win over the long haul. Are you firing cannonballs before you know where the target is?Or are you firing bullets… learning… adjusting… and then committing your resources?And once you find the target…Are you marching 20 miles every single day?
Because great leadership isn’t about heroic bursts of activity.
It’s about disciplined progress and smart experimentation.
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