Always Change a Winning Team

Book excerpt: Beware success: it breeds failure. That's the controversial message of this fascinating and timely book. Much management literature is preoccupied with finding excellent companies and dissecting what makes them successful. Yet all too often, these shining examples slump into decline a few years later. Paradoxically, it is when a business is at the peak of its success that it is most vulnerable to failure. So what exactly is going wrong? Drawing on his expertise as an organizational consultant, Peter Robertson shows that managers in successful companies can easily become complacent, believing that their prosperity will continue unchallenged and unchecked. Worse still, success feeds vanity, making businesses inflexible and resistant to change. Competitors soon catch up and threaten their position. To avoid the success trap, a company must be constantly ready to reinvent itself, even when it seems to be thriving. But regeneration calls for conscious choices and efforts on the part of all the people within the organization. The author explores the kind of leadership that enables and inspires people to change. He shows that values, integrity, and trust create the stability and sense of security that today's companies need not just to win, but to keep on winning. Book jacket.