# 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

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-learning-leader-show-with-ryan-hawk-467929/687-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
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Podcast: [The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-learning-leader-show-with-ryan-hawk-467929)
Published: 2026-05-10T23:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://learningleadershow.libsyn.com/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
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-learning-leader-show-with-ryan-hawk-467929/episodes/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
Duration seconds: 6262

## Resource

NEW BOOK -- The Price of Becoming Buy it -- www.LearningLeader.com/Becoming The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk This is brought to you by Insight Global . If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through Talent or Technical Services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world has the hustle and grit to deliver. Jim Collins is the author of some of the most influential business books ever written — Good to Great , Built to Last , and Great by Choice . His concepts have become part of the leadership vocabulary. Level 5 Leadership. The Flywheel. First Who, 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 What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative . It is the product of ten years of research and is the most personal thing he has ever written. We flew to Boulder, Colorado, to record this one in person with Jim. Key Learnings Jim's grandfather wrote his own death story. Jimmy Collins was a test pilot in the 1930s. He told Jim's grandmother, Dolores, that if he died, she should pull the last chapter from his desk and publish it. He died in a test crash. After the service, she pulled out the chapter. The title was "I'm Dead." The last chapter, written in first person, described the plane coming out of the sky, the screaming wings, the crash. The final words, by his own pen: "I am dead now." For seven decades, his grandmother never cried. When Jim asked her in her nineties to tell the story of his grandfather, she cried and said, "Thank you for that. I've never cried before." She'd been a single mom in the middle of the Depression. Of all the things Jim feels good about in…

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