Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

During my years as a financial advisor, I watched a number of people make the same mistake over and over again. They make a few moves that bring them some success and right away they start to think that they have a little more insight and skill than the poor shmuck down the street. Of course this doesn't last long, as you're only as good as your last trade.

The reason I bring that up is because in management and business ownership, the same thing can happen very easily.

I was hired to manage a newly acquired business one time, and I watched the husband and wife ownership team respond to their new acquisition.

Pretty soon there were new cars, they had one of those mobile pet businesses come and give their doggy a shampoo and manicure in the work office, and hired a relative and paid far beyond market wages because of his relationship to one of the owners.

Needless to say, they lasted only about 2 years before they lost it. Some people have repeated the saying that success breeds success; it's not true. The real saying should be: the proper response to success breeds success!

One of the great destroyers of people in any area, is developing the attitude of overconfidence. It is the undoing of more people than you could imagine, in every field and endeavor there is to participate in.

Do you know what it really is? When success comes, those that are destroyed by it, start to think that it is something innate within themselves, some special gift that is unique to them alone. In other words they start to think of themselves as something special, as someone that has something that nobody else has. Wrong!

With myself in my own business ownership endeavors and managing for others, I have found when you are at the height of your success, that is when you need to buckle down the most. Not only in continually working hard, but honing your skills and continuously learning and drawing upon new resources to keep you on top of things.

To believe that you are something special because of current success, could be the next step to complete failure if you don't continually increase and train your skills. Do that and you won't be surprised by the sudden plunge in the business or department that you are responsible for that comes about because you thought it was you, rather then the  application of known principles, plus the knowledge of the market you serve, that keeps things going great where you are placed.