Managing Success

 

What is Success?

Many people define success differently. It could be as simple as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

Good old Wikipedia defines success as the state or condition of meeting a defined range of expectations. It may be viewed as the opposite of failure. Different people measure success differently.

A good question would be what is success to you? I would very much want to read your responses in the comments.

More important however is how do we go about the process of managing success. For many people it is a difficult task to get to the top (whatever the top is in their context) but it is actually much more difficult to stay at the top.

You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one-anonymous.

There are many forces and factors that stand in the way of that person who has risen to the top all trying as though by default to bring the person down. Maintaining and growing on your success is one of our greatest challenges. When it is not pride assaulting you, you could find yourself struggling with impostor syndrome. For some people what their success affords them is the very thing that brings them down. It is said your true character is revealed when you have the means to do it without having to care what anyone else thinks. Money they say doesn’t change people, it merely unmasks them. Apart from this very obvious challenges to the maintenance of our success, what other forces are at work in trying to bring us down.

Carey Nieuwhof says the greatest enemy of your future success is your current success

Threats to the maintenance of your success

1)      Comfort with the Status quo. When you get to a point where you think you have arrived, then you are in danger of losing it all. There is a big difference between contentment and being comfortable with the status quo. The former teaches you to be grateful for the far you have come while leaving the door open for greater advancement while the latter tells you that there is no reason to go further. It is possible to mistakenly believe that there is no higher height than what you have achieved until someone else comes and surpasses your record. Records exist to be broken and therefore if you choose not to break your own, remember someone else will come along and do it. You need to remain hungry if your success is going to be sustainable. Complacency is the fastest killer of success. We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things because we are curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths-Walt Disney. 

2)      Arrogance. The other danger you are likely to fall into is that of a know it all. Arrogance keeps you from learning from others because you mistakenly think you are the smartest bloke in the room. When this happens, people start avoiding you and cannot offer you any advice. When you get to a point where you are surrounded by Yes-men who do not question anything you are doing, then you are on your way down.  While you don’t have to do everything people suggest, you must never reach that point where you don’t listen to anyone for that matter. Jim Collins says in how the Mighty fall that leaders who broker success over a long period show an astonishing humility. They realize that despite their hard work, they are fortunate to be in the position they are in. They never rest on their laurels; they work hard to keep the mission advancing. Never allow your success put a ceiling on your willingness to consider other opinions.

3)      You stop leading and start managing. Leadership is about innovation and taking people to new heights. Management is concerned with maintaining what has been achieved. While maintenance is good in and of itself, there needs to be an emphasis on progress. You not only want to keep your current success, you want to ensure continuity. Allow yourself to see new possibilities.

4)      Over-celebration. There is nothing wrong with celebrating a great milestone or accomplishment. By all means we should spare time to be happy about what we have done to get to where we are. This however becomes a problem when we fail to snap out of it in time. This is how we end up talking about our great past but have nothing noteworthy to talk about today. I always like giving the example of Apple, Samsung and Nokia especially with regard to Smartphone business. Before the advent of the smartphone, Nokia was the undisputed leader in the mobile devices industry but for some reason they missed the boat when it came to this new shift and they have never recovered. It is very difficult to think that either Apple or Samsung will fall for the same. The speed with which they move on to the next one keeps them winning. Whatever success you have enjoyed, never let it go to your head and cause you to lose sight of what the future holds. Celebrate but then quickly get back on the grind. This is the only way to keep winning. Remember the idea is not to win once but to stay winning. In his book Only the Paranoid Survive, Andy Grove says that ‘success only happens for that short time prior to the next market disruption.’ You had better not get caught napping. 

 

Growing beyond your current success.

There are a number of things you can do to move on from your success in a healthy way.

To guard against the dangers of success, Les Trachtman recommends that you need a balanced ego alongside a healthy dose of paranoia. He goes on to say that success is often the predecessor of failure. If you are not careful, your success might be the very thing that leads to your downfall.

To survive your success, you must maintain childlike curiosity, remain open-minded and pay attention to the subtle changes taking place around you. Disruptions are never obvious. They hit you like a bolt from the blue. It serves you best to appear as the foolish one and listen to new ideas. A failure to do so could lead to you biting the dust sooner rather than later.

Jen Rao in an article on fizzle.co says that it is important to look in the mirror. It’s about being self-aware whenever you are sabotaging yourself. As you see yourself and the ways in which you are sabotaging your growth, you will be in a position to act differently.

Stepping away from the success could also be immensely helpful in forging forward. While in the midst of it, it is possible to stagnate. By stepping away probably through taking some time off or looking at your success from an outsider’s perspective, you might just be able to see new windows of opportunity to move forward.

One of the other great things to do is to grow your circle of friends. When you maintain the friends you had at a lower level of success without bringing on board new friends, you are likely to start feeling like the big fish which will cause you to rest easy. Always seek to be around people who are smarter and further along the road. This has the twin effect of keeping you hungry and humble. You get to realize that there is so much more to accomplish than what you have seen so far. Super-successful friends will also show you a different way of doing things which has enabled them to get to where they are. You will be able to gain from their networks and everything they bring with them.

I will close with a famous quote from Apostle Paul, I do not consider, brethren that I have captured and made it my own yet but This one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the supreme and heavenly prize to which God in Christ is calling us upward. Philippians 3:13-14.

How are you going about managing your own success? Share in the comments so we can learn together.