Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
During the years I've managed, one of the most dangerous times of a business or department is the times when they're experiencing their greatest success.
So are the comments by Grove above meant to say that we are to live in an endless experience of frustration? I don't think so. I think what he's saying is that we need to ignore what we think of as success, and continue to focus on what needs to be done now, while looking to where we're going.
Success does have a numbing effect upon people. I've seen some of the wildest spending on things that weren't needed at the times of the highest success. Decisions were made as if there would never be a time when things would struggle or slow down again. In other words, like Grove says, it "breeds complacency."
I've always said that the greatest amount of discipline is needed at the height fo our successes. There is never a more dangerous time in a company than those times.
There needs to be that healthy paranoia that Grove always used as his mantra. It's not that we expect and look for things to go wrong or slow down, but we know that they will sometime. It's a reality that all businesses face.
Those that survive are those that understand this. Nothing has changed because of success, and nothing stays the same because of success. A business is something that's alive, because it deals with people.
There will be boom and bust times for any business within its life cycle. That's simply life. Those that are the most disciplined and understand the times they're living in, will be those that succeed over the long term. We need to focus even more at times of success for the very reason that it is the most likely time for complacency to enter in. And complacency will bring failure. It always does.
Success means that we've done the right things to bring us to a certain place, now we must keep our focus at heightened levels and fight that tendency to let down our guard and coast along on past accomplishments. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Everything eventually will grind to a halt if it isn't kept going. We need to ensure that things are kept going. Only the paranoid survive.
Other Andy Grove Resources:
Andy Grove's Rational Exuberance
The Digital Age . . . driven by the passion of Intel's Andrew Grove
The History and Influence of Andy Grove
Andy Grove enters new post-Intel role as activist capitalist
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