There’s never a wrong time to think about success planning for your business and your personal life. However, January seems to be when most of us do it. As we begin 2023, I’m dedicating this article to those of you who want to enjoy more success.
One of my first jobs was selling life insurance. I was blessed to have a manager, Arthur P. Carroll, Jr., who taught me more than sales skills. He also taught me life skills. In his coaching sessions, I remember he’d make a point to celebrate when I achieved a goal. But he’d always follow the celebration with the question, “Now what?” Of course, Art’s point was for me to set a new goal and improve on what I’d already accomplished. He’d also help me develop an improvement strategy with incremental targets leading to achieving the new goal. “Complacency,” Art would say, “is the enemy of sustained success.”
Earl Nightingale was one of the 20th Century’s most inspirational writers and speakers on personal and business success. His best-known writings include The Strangest Secret, How to Completely Change Your Life in 30 Seconds, The Essence of Success, and How to Think Business Success.
Nightingale simply defined success as “The progressive realization of worthwhile goals.” Note the words “progressive” and “goals” rather than just achieving a singular goal. To me, he’s saying success isn’t a destination but a process of progressively accomplishing worthy pursuits in our life’s journey.
While it’s true that accomplishing a goal, reaching an objective, or hitting a target is a successful result, Nightingale’s point is that it doesn’t mean you’re successful. Success is a way of living your life.
After over 30 years of writing and speaking about how to make you and your businesses successful, it occurred to me that success isn’t a destination. It’s a pursuit that will never be and shouldn’t be achieved. We should always be asking, “Now what?” It’s like success plus one – constantly looking for one more way to improve.
In the past, I’ve often talked about the principles of a 2001 book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. It’s hard to believe it’s been over 20 years since Collins wrote the book, and the years haven’t been kind to most of the so-called great companies featured in his book. Let’s review the criteria, and then I’ll explain where I think some of the “Great” companies went wrong.
In Good to Great, Collins described how he and his team determined if a company transitioned from good to great. Mind you, all the 1,400 companies they evaluated were considered successful, but they chose just 11 that met their criteria of going from good to great.
- Abbott Laboratories
- ‘Fannie Mae
- Kimberly-Clark
- Nucor
- Wells Fargo
- Gillette
- Kroger
- Pitney Bowes
- Walgreens
- Circuit City
- Philip Morris
The research results showed that these 11 companies had seven characteristics in common:
- Level 5 Leadership – Leaders who are humble, not self-serving, or self-promoting but driven to do what’s best for the company.
- First, “Who,” then “What?” – Get the right people on the bus (the company), then figure out where to go, and find the right seats (positions) for each person.
- Confront the Facts – Be brutally honest about situations and circumstances but don’t give up hope. Instead form success-driven strategies to improve on what’s working and, when necessary, change the status quo – no matter how entrenched it is.
- The Hedgehog Concept – Three overlapping circles that reveal what you’re passionate about, what you do best, and what makes you money. Where the circles overlap is called your hedgehog, and that’s where you should focus. (See figure 1)
- A Culture of Discipline – Willing to eliminate the elements of your company (people, products, processes, things, practices, etc.) that impede success takes discipline.
- Technology Accelerators – Use technology to accelerate growth within the three circles of the hedgehog concept.
- The Flywheel Effect – This is the compounding effect of many small initiatives congruently and continuously acting upon each other. Keep moving forward. Momentum makes successful progress a habit and breakthroughs occur regularly. (See figure 2)
Where Are They Now?
What I’m about to say isn’t a condemnation of the good-to-great concept. But it does make my point that success isn’t a destination.
Here’s what happened to the 11 companies showcased and deemed as good-to-great companies. Only Abbott Laboratories, Nucor, and Kroger are outperforming the market (SP500 index).
- One went bankrupt.
- One was placed in conservatorship.
- One was purchased.
- Two lost 20% of their stock price.
- Four had no change in their stock price.
Characteristic number seven is the culprit. Collins calls it The Flywheel Effect – the compounding effect of many small initiatives congruently and continuously acting upon each other.
I call it the Keep on Doing Principle. That is, keep on doing the things that made you successful, keep innovating, and implementing improvements. In short, keep on moving forward. It requires relentlessness, resilience, tenacity, and persistence, but that’s likely what got you where you are in the first place. My old sales manager would say they got complacent and needed to ask, “Now what?”
Like Collin’s flywheel metaphor, it requires significant effort to get started, but momentum becomes your ally once the flywheel is in motion. Each successive turn makes it easier to maintain and even increase speed.
But this is where many companies begin to coast and become complacent. They start ignoring the things that got them there and cease their continuous pursuit of ways to improve. To sustain greatness, successful companies never stop improving.
Continuous incremental improvements over time produce better, longer-lasting, sustainable results than one big change. For example, would you benefit more from doing 100 sit-ups every day over the next week or 20 sit-ups every day for the next 35 days? Either way, it’s 700 sit-ups.
Most likely, you wouldn’t even do the 100 per day for the entire week because it would be too difficult and painful. On the other hand, there’s a better chance you’d do 20 a day for 35 days. Plus, after 35 days, you’ll notice a physical improvement, form the habit, and might even keep doing them.
Is It Time for a Gut Check?
Excuse the pun, but I couldn’t resist. Borrowing from characteristic number 3 in Collin’s list, Confront the Facts, be brutally honest about situations and circumstances but don’t give up hope. It might be time for you and your team to do a gut check. I call it a gut check because, to me, it goes deeper than brutal honesty. What you discover will surprise you. Here’s the process:
- Make a list of all the types and categories of services your company offers.
- Ask yourself these questions about each one:
- How good are we at this?
- Are we staffed and equipped for this?
- Are we profitable at this?
- Does it interfere with other, more profitable services?
- Can we improve on any aspect of providing this service?
- Should we continue doing it?
- Make a list of new services you could offer or innovative ways to expand your current list.
- Ask this similar list of questions about each of these considerations:
- Will we be good at it?
- Are we staffed and equipped to do it?
- Will we be profitable doing it?
- Will it interfere with other profitable services we’re currently doing?
- Will we be better off doing it than not doing it?
- Is it worth the effort and investment to start doing it?
- Remember the Flywheel Effect.
- Take appropriate action. Just having the lists does nothing – it takes action. But, if you’re brutally honest, not taking action should make you uncomfortable.
The Key Point
There’s probably one word that describes why eight of the eleven great companies identified in Good to Great failed to sustain greatness. That word is complacency. Don’t become complacent even if your company is performing beyond your wildest expectations. Continuously look for ways to improve and take action to implement them.
Great companies can’t stand still or rest on their laurels because someone else is always in hot pursuit. Remember one of the most famous slogans in advertising history: “We’re number 2, so we try harder.” I don’t even have to mention the company name. By the way, do you remember who was number 1?
One of my favorite quotes comes from Dwight Eisenhower, “Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.”
Don’t aspire to be great; aspire to improve continually. Success, like greatness, isn’t a destination; it’s a continuous pursuit. Success is the natural consequence of doing the right things, doing them right, and continuously improving.
In conclusion, there’s no single measure of success, and certainly no single answer for how to be successful in life. Yet by looking at other successful people’s habits, you can learn new tactics and strategies to implement in your daily life. Cultivate and nurture these abilities, and over time you may find that you’re better equipped to reach your goals and achieve the success you want. The next step begins with the question, “Now what?”
