How to Manage Your Success by A.

Lewis, March 2016

Individual success can be defined as the achievement of one’s desired goals. A company’s success is defined as
achievement of its goals related to beating the competition. People and companies that get what they want and
become excellent are considered successful. Various books discuss how to learn from failures and mistakes, but
very little has been written about how to learn from successes. Proper management of success is necessary to
make it last for the long haul. Studies have shown that we often sabotage our own success for two main reasons:

1. Complacency: Individuals or companies often become satisfied with their successes and allow themselves to
plateau and stop doing the things that made them successful. They coast on their old successes and they stop
learning and improving. In his book “How the Mighty Fall,” Jim Collins describes the stages of decline of an
organization or person; first there is hubris where they lose sight of the true underlying factors that created
success. Then there is lack of discipline where they make risky leaps into areas where they cannot be great, or
they grow too fast and they’re unable to maintain excellence. Then there is denial of risk when people or
companies discount negative data, amplify positive data, and put a positive spin on ambiguous data. Napoleon,
who had the greatest record of military success in history, made these mistakes when he waged too many wars
after France was already bankrupt. He was then defeated permanently at Waterloo. Although all success should
be celebrated, lasting success requires perpetual learning and improving.

2. Failure to Learn from Success: We must properly indentify the causes of our success and be amply clear
when success was due to favorable scenarios such as a lack of competition or due to our own excellence. Often,
successful people or companies feel entitled to continued success without knowing if past success was due to
good fortune or effort. They often assume it was due to their extraordinary skill and effort and then assume that
additional skill and effort is no longer necessary. To discern the difference between successes from fortuitous
circumstances versus effort, one can simply notice if the results can be reproduced. Collins identifies
cornerstones of success management in “Good to Great” as the concentric circles of excellence: 1) Awareness
of what you or the company can be the very best in based on core skills. 2) Passion for what you are doing.
3) Profitability based on market demand for your products or services. It is common for organizations and
people to makes strategic errors that sabotage their success when they fail to identify the causes of success.

Application: If success is to be perpetuated in the long run, an organization or person must not allow their
success to change the behavior that lead to the success in the first place. For example, the Peter Principle states
that the selection of an employee for a higher position is often based on the employee’s performance in his
current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted
once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence." Persons
and companies must not become complacent or haughty and should always be training, learning, and
improving. They should always feel they deserve success (avoiding success rejection syndrome) but know the
reason they deserve success is use of skills and effort that lead to excellence. Precisely identifying which skills
and efforts lead to past success is paramount to managing your success so that it endures in perpetuity.
How to Manage Your Success

1. Give an example of complacency in your company.

2. Give an example of failure to identify the correct cause of a past success.

3. Have you observed the Peter Principle in your company?

4. How can you better manage your success?