Chapter 14

PAST SUCCESSES

How Yesterday’s Success Sabotages Tomorrow’s Innovation

Success can be dangerous. In the spiritual realm, it often leads to an arrogance that looks down on others and presumes that God is lucky to have us on his side. It’s a grave error. It has led to many a shocking spiritual downfall.

But success can also be organizationally dangerous. Though it sure beats failure, it carries with it the same risk of arrogance and the same high odds of a shocking and unforeseen downfall.

It’s always tempting to take too much credit. We’d like to think that our success is the result of working harder, smarter, and having more talent than everyone else. But in reality, success is usually the result of a confluence of factors. It’s the result of hard work, wise decisions, and a generous portion of good luck, sometimes even blind luck.

We tend to forget or take for granted fortuitous timing and divine coincidences, and the important role that people and things completely out of our control played in our success. The view through the rearview mirror can be a bit fuzzy.

That’s where arrogance creeps in. As soon as we think that our success was all of our own doing and that we could do it over again if given the opportunity, we stop listening. We no longer learn. We pontificate.

Why? Because we think we know it all.

And in one sense, we may be right.

We may know it all in terms of how to become successful.

But what we don’t know (and often don’t realize we don’t know) is what it will take to remain successful. That’s an entirely different set of information.

THE “NOT INVENTED HERE” SYNDROME

One of the most common forms of organizational arrogance is found in the rejection of anything “not invented here.” It shows up as a lack of interest in fledgling technologies, methods, or programs that work elsewhere. It discounts and rejects the ideas, innovations, and successes of others. It turns an entire organization into a late adopter of anything that’s not homegrown.

You’ll often find this attitude in the long-established church that criticizes and resists the innovative approaches to ministry that newer or less established churches try. It writes them off, only to see them become mainstream in a few years, and misses the boat because of it.

It’s what caused Atari and Hewlett-Packard to ridicule Steve Jobs’ and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer. According to Jobs, the interaction went something like this: “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’ ”¹¹

Very few sea-change innovations come from within mature and well-established organizations. They usually start with outliers who aren’t even on the radar screen yet. A “not invented here” syndrome shuts out most of these innovations because only the homegrown variety gets a hearing. That’s devastating to an organization’s future.

From the top of the mountain called Success, these new ideas and duct-taped prototypes tend to look more like distractions than golden opportunities. That’s why so many successful leaders and organizations ignore them. They figure they have more important things to do.

In reality, nothing could be farther from the truth.

One of the most important things a leader and leadership team must do is to look out the window. They need to see what’s happening “out there,” because out there is where the future lies, both in terms of unforeseen dangers and amazing opportunities.

But once a “not invented here” mindset takes over, no one bothers to look out the window anymore. They’re too busy looking in the mirror and admiring what they see.

OVERVALUING EXPERIENCE

Another common problem that follows success is a tendency to overvalue experience.

Experience is a wonderful thing. It provides a wealth of knowledge that can be learned only over time. It brings perspective. It’s a key component of wisdom. But experience (especially highly successful experience) can also produce an arrogance that discounts anything it doesn’t fully understand or hasn’t yet seen. And it’s often particularly dismissive of anything proposed by the young and inexperienced, summarily writing them off as unworthy of a second look.

I’ve experienced this from both sides.

When I was in my midtwenties and early thirties, I espoused almost all of the same ideas and concepts that were later credited as being innovative and core to the growth and success of North Coast Church.

But when I shared them with older and more successful pastors (a rather large group at that time), not once did anyone delve deeper to see if there was any validity to what I was advocating. Not once.

Without fail they brushed me off, informing me that my ideas would never work and that I’d understand why once I had more experience under my belt.

Yet years later, some of these same leaders and churches now come from across the country to see and learn from what we were doing. They even take notes.

What changed?

Not much. The core ideas and ministry paradigms are still the same today as they were then. The only difference is that North Coast is now one of the larger churches in the country and I have gray hair. We have experience, so they listen.

But now the tables have turned. I’m the one with a wealth of experience. North Coast is the large and well-known church, and it’s tempting for our leadership team to overvalue our experience and slough off the new ideas and insights that come from small and not yet “successful” leaders and churches.

But if we do that, we’re doomed. Our past will be brighter than our future.

The fact is, most of the new paradigms, programs, and innovations that will be crucial to our success in the future are already being tried somewhere. Inexperienced leaders who aren’t yet on the radar screen are putting them into practice and talking them up.

That’s why it’s so important for leaders of successful organizations to aggressively fight off the tendency to overvalue experience. The more of it we have, the more we tend to value it, and the harder it becomes to listen to those who have the answers we need but not the resume that impresses.

It’s an age-old problem. Young leaders seem to get younger every year. But they aren’t. They’re the same age we were when we started out. They have great new ideas and insights that are already in early bloom. Some of them see the future with 20/20 vision. Someday they will be the sages. People will sit at their feet. Why not get a head start and listen to them today?

Ironically some of these future sages are right under our noses, but we’ve not yet noticed them because they’ve not yet worked their way up the food chain.

They’re what I call young eagles. They can be found within almost every organization. But more often than not, their wings are clipped by leaders and leadership teams that overvalue experience and dismiss inexperience. They’re forced to pay their dues, wait their turn, and keep their beaks shut.

If they want to fly, they have to go elsewhere.

Sadly, most of them do.

Worse, most leaders and organizations never even notice when they leave, because they never paid any attention when they were present.

TRUSTING THE RECIPE

Another common downside of success is a tendency to overtrust the recipe. When something works extraordinarily well, it’s natural to assume that if it works here, it will work everywhere.

But our recipes for success are seldom as transferable as successful people and organizations think. There are too many contaminating variables, including an ever-changing cultural context.

When a thriving business in one part of the country decides to expand to another part of the country, odds are good that it will struggle. A great concept in Kansas City seldom comes off as being so great in Seattle.

When two successful companies merge, it can look good on paper. They wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. Smart people sign off on the deal, convinced that two winners will make a champion. But in the real world, this rarely works as advertised. When highly successful corporate cultures combine, the normal result isn’t synergy; it’s conflict, because the successful recipe for one seldom works for the other.

Or consider what typically happens when a highly successful leader jumps from one industry to another. Sometimes it works out great. But often it’s a disaster. Again, it’s because the recipe for success in one field is seldom the recipe for success in another.

This reminds me of something I learned from a San Francisco baker. Like many tourists, I love the sourdough bread they bake and serve there. I always wondered why it tastes so much better and why no one has taken the recipe to other cities. It seemed like a no-brainer, a money-making idea to be sure.

Then I learned that the real secret to the San Francisco taste is not the recipe. It’s a bacterium that thrives in the area. When the yeast ferments, its spores give the bread a distinctive taste. The San Francisco bacterium is different from the spores that thrive in Dallas, LA, or New York. So even if you use the same recipe and starter, their bread won’t taste like it was made in San Francisco. The taste is impossible to duplicate without the bacterial mix found in San Francisco’s air.

I think that’s a great way to think about success. It’s not always found by following the recipe. It also matters where you do the cooking. There is no guarantee that what works well in one time and place will work in another. But that’s a hard lesson to accept, once we’ve found a recipe that works.

Another variation of this error occurs when we assume that whatever worked in the past will work in the future. When we fall into the trap of overtrusting in yesterday’s recipe based on yesterday’s success, we will fail even to consider new innovations and paradigms because the things we did yesterday worked so well.

Consider Montgomery Ward, the once high-flying retailer. After adding a retail component to its dry-goods mail-order business, it rapidly became a retail powerhouse by buying up big city properties at rock bottom prices during the Depression.

When its competitors began moving out to the suburbs, the president of Montgomery Ward, Sewell Avery, refused to follow. He was convinced that another financial meltdown would come soon. So he hoarded cash, dug in his heels, and waited for another opportunity to buy up properties at deeply distressed prices.

But the next depression never came. The suburbs flourished. The inner cities died. His previously successful recipe failed miserably. And his company went out of business with barely a whimper in early 2001.

Now, before we come down too hard on poor Mr. Avery, we need to remember that we are not all that different. Once we find something that works, most of us have a hard time believing that it won’t work everywhere and anytime.

For proof of this, just look at the long list of leaders and organizations (churches included) that once were great but missed out on the next wave because they failed to see it coming or were too busy doing what they’d always done.

IBM once received 70 percent of all money spent on computer purchases. GM once dominated 60 percent of the US auto market. Sony once controlled the market for personal portable music. CompuServe and Prodigy once battled for control of the internet. Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns were investment giants, and they disappeared overnight. Most of the largest churches from fifty years ago have little influence today.

These weren’t stupid people. They were simply blinded by their success. They overtrusted the recipe.

ADULATION

A final danger of success is that it creates an aura of invincibility and, with it, unwarranted adulation.

Adulation is a close cousin to arrogance and just as dangerous.

When arrogance strikes, we stop listening to our critics. When adulation strikes, we no longer have critics. Both will mess you up. Big time.

Adulation tends to silence the hard questions that need to be asked. When everyone around you assumes that you are right, no one wants to be the jerk who foolishly challenges the expert. No one wants to risk saying something stupid. So even if they have doubts, most people will keep their doubts to themselves.

When that happens, it’s hard to lead well.

Pushback and hard questions are important parts of the innovation process. They derail our dumb ideas. They refine our great ideas. They turn good ideas into great ideas. Without pushback and hard questions, it’s hard to know which is which.

I’ve found that a long string of successes will cause most people to downplay or forget about our mistakes and failures. It’s human nature. Lots of people want gurus who are always right and organizations that never fail.

They don’t exist.

But we wish they did.

Success is a great thing. It’s what we’re all aiming for. But it has its dangers. They remind me of a principle from mountain climbing: the closer you get to the top, the greater the danger you’re surrounded by.

Every mountain climber would rather be approaching the peak than stuck back at base camp. Every leader would rather have success than failure or mediocrity. But only a fool forgets that the higher you go in mountain climbing or leadership, the greater the risk to your future. It’s not a time for cockiness. It’s a time for gratitude and caution. It’s a time to listen to those you might be tempted to write off.