Surviving the 9 Traps of Winning

IT IS ALWAYS a challenge to change the way you think. And success can make it that much harder.

In Seduced by Success, Robert Herbold observes that “whether you are talking about individuals, small groups, or large organizations, success generates the risk of falling prey to the mindset of becoming proud, to being very comfortable with your current practices, and to losing your sense of urgency.”

Instead of building on your successes, you become complacent, repeating what you have always done. The “legacy of success is too often failure.” As Peter Drucker wrote, “Success always makes obsolete the very behavior that achieved it. It always creates new realities. It always creates, above all, its own and different problems. Only the fairy tale ends, ‘They lived happily ever after.’”

Here are nine traps that we face to help us put our past success into perspective and become “trapped in the exhilaration of the present.”

Trap #1: Neglect: Sticking with Yesterday’s Business Model

Things change. What you did yesterday does not guarantee success tomorrow. Every component of your business plan needs to be objectively examined for potential vulnerabilities. “It’s very important that your people understand that part of their job is to spot vulnerabilities and to make a lot of noise in bringing them to people’s attention so that you can take action.”

At the same time, focus on what is working well. “What we should be doing is broadening the impact of what is working and adding new but related capabilities. What is important is to develop a culture that constantly asks the questions: ‘Where do we go from here with what is working? How do we broaden and deepen the impact of what is working?’”

Trap #2: Pride: Allowing Your Products to Become Outdated

Success can cause you to believe that you don’t have to do all of the dirty work that is required to stay ahead. You need to always be growing and improving over and over again to keep up with the demands of the marketplace and an ever-changing world.

This slow, painful slide into irrelevance happens to successful products when their management succumbs to those three basic human tendencies: loss of urgency, a proud and protective attitude, and an entitlement mentality.

Thoroughly focus on the next big thing. Pride often makes it difficult to think realistically about what is really happening in people’s minds and in the marketplace. Herbold cautions that the measure of success that you are currently using regarding your product or service may no longer be relevant in a changing world. Going forward, you may need to evaluate things differently.

Trap #3: Boredom: Clinging to Your Once-Successful Branding After It Becomes Stale and Dull

Keeping your brand fresh and contemporary is hard work. Once you become successful and think you have it all figured out, it is natural to sit back and reap the rewards. Know what your brand stands for and relentlessly reassess how it is carried out in all of the details of its execution. “You will want to protect the elements of your brand that you know have made you successful in the past. On the other hand, you’ve got to be objective about what the marketplace is saying and adjust accordingly.”

Trap #4: Complexity: Ignoring Your Business Processes as They Become Cumbersome and Complicated

Successful organizations often reward themselves by adding more and more people but allowing processes to become complex and fragmented. “They then reorganize into smaller groups to get as much clarity of responsibility as possible, but this often leads to unproductive fragmentation of processes that should be carried out organization-wide.” Processes can take on a life of their own. It is good to rotate people through assignments so they are less defensive about changes to processes they were once wedded to.

Trap #5: Bloat: Rationalizing Your Loss of Speed and Agility

Success usually means adding more and more people, which can create fragmentation and slow down decision-making. The bloat that success brings makes it very hard to react quickly to change. Complexity, duplication of functions, and bureaucracy set in.

It is wise to use fresh talent to expand your perspective when moving into new areas or revamping what you have been doing. Use top talent and get out of their way. “One lesson I learned,” writes Herbold, “from both P&G and Microsoft, is that once you get great people on board and have them fired up, the worst thing you can do is to encumber them with bureaucratic committees, task forces, clearance processes, and other busywork that simply gums up the work.”

Real leadership is the key to speed and agility. “It is important to cut your losses and move on when things aren’t working. That requires real leadership.”

Trap #6: Mediocrity: Condoning Poor Performance and Letting Your Star Employees Languish

Success can keep us from doing the hard things that brought us success in the first place. Many successful organizations treat people well, but they also treat them all the same. “While many companies take pride in this approach, the problem is that the superstars don’t get stretched, and the poor performers don’t get confronted.”

Sometimes, it can be best to bring in fresh talent. “Fresh talent is especially effective when business practices have become routine and when the organization is falling behind the competition. Nothing uncovers opportunities quite like a new set of eyes.”

Trap #7: Lethargy: Getting Lulled into A Culture of Comfort, Casualness, and Confidence

There is a tendency for both individuals and organizations to become complacent, believing that they have all the answers, and to become casual about the things they should be urgent about. We can become defensive about any second thoughts about what we have always done, becoming arrogant and close-minded.

When an organization has been working well for a while, it is not uncommon to see the leadership begin to nurture a retirement-home culture. “Its characteristics are slow, consensus-oriented decision making, comfort, ambiguity, casualness, confidence, and lack of aggressive behavior in general.” Clogged arteries.

Organizations need to have an outward focus. It’s easy to get complacent when your focus is internal—especially internal comfort and satisfaction.

Trap #8: Timidity: Not Confronting Wars, Infighting., and Obstructionists

With success often comes the fragmentation into fiefdoms. “These entrenched division managements fight off any attempts to initiate significant change that might disrupt their fundamental comfort.” When all else fails, reorganize to dismantle the fiefdoms and get people back to basics.

Trap #9: Confusion: Unwittingly Providing Schizophrenic Communications

Clear communication is critical for the continued success of an organization. The words and deeds need to align, and when they don’t, confusion sets in. “Always give the employees a description of the current status of things, the desired outcome, and clear expectations of what should take place in the future.”

Avoiding the 9 Traps of Success

The key to avoiding the nine traps of success is having the humility to ask questions—a questioning attitude.

Success breeds a culture of lack of urgency, satisfaction, excessive pride, a protective attitude toward the way things have been done in the past. Success also encourages an entitlement mentality that assumes that since you’ve done well in the past, that will always be the case.

The humbling part of business is that just as soon as you have achieved some degree of success, the word gets out. Your competitors are observing you, and they are hungry and anxious. They are plotting aggressively to move ahead of where you are. That means you are actually in a foot race. But these human tendencies cause you to ignore all that and sit back and enjoy the comfort of finally arriving.

So, remember two things. First, be as aggressive as you were when you were on your way up. Second, develop a culture that always asks questions, probing for new and better ways to do things.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 03:21 PM
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