Predicting Continued Success

Photo by Hugo Rocha on Unsplash

When things are going well, we naturally focus our time doubling down on the things that have made us successful. Our offering are resonating, so we focus on raising awareness, pitching to those who haven’t bought yet and investing on expanding our reach, so that we can sell more. 

All of that makes sense – why wouldn’t we double down and capitalize on what’s working?

The risk comes, though, when we’re too focused on “now” and not at all focused on “tomorrow”, on “what’s next”. That is, where is the market headed and what does the customer want? How will the landscape change in 3, 5 and 10 years? Where are our threats?

Because it’s easy to get caught up in today’s success, easy to fall back on this will continue forever. 

But that’s not realistic and, as we know from our own life experiences. Life doesn’t work that way. 

The real test of a successful, enduring entity (individual or organization) is how much time we dedicate to investing in our future. How much of our time today, are we thinking about tomorrow? 

The most commonly cited example is, of course, 3M, with its “15% rule” (15% of employees' time would be focused on innovation) and its 30/4 rule (whereby 30% of its sales should come from products that didn’t exist four years ago).

These are tangible, measurable goals. We can assess them and evaluate them and, if we’re not seeing the results we want, we can go back and assess what didn’t work. 

The trick is to translate that into our own lives and our own organizations. This isn’t easy - because when things are going well, we tend not to worry about how that might change. 

But the best predictor, in my mind, of the future-focused organization is how much time we’re spending on understanding, predicting and embedding change.