Success: The Business Change That Ruins Companies?

Why is it that the more successful a company becomes, the less able it is to manage that success? Is success the business change that inevitably will ruin your business?

There was a time when anyone who understood anything about either business in general or the technology business in particular would look at Microsoft and swear it was on a trajectory of success that would never end. Sure, that flies in the face of what anyone who’s studied business knows must happen over time, but with so many business changes obviously still in front of them and the amount of talent on their payroll, surely Microsoft was different, right?

Well, of course not. Last week, this article in The New York Times called Microsoft out for their now-over-a-decade run of mediocrity, and it got me thinking: inevitability of the slide notwithstanding, is there a way to know when a company’s slide is beginning?

Let’s revisit Apple’s iPad. I was strong in my technological criticism of Apple’s Giant New Binky. I gave Apple credit for how iPad might be significant if they can pull something together: the ability to create real change in the phone business . . . once the technological and form-factor issues get worked through and the market has a chance to react.

But this big change is in the way the announcement got made; the iPad isn’t ready, and yet Apple announced the product and their marketing and partnership plans. Is this am intentional about-face from Apple’s longstanding way of doing things, or have they panicked? And either way, was it the right choice (as in, carefully thought out and with a plan to manage the business change), or just the beginning of a run down the same path Microsoft took about fifteen years ago — we’re so smart we can’t make big mistakes or be hurt by our small ones ?

When you enact business change, you create business success. When you start to believe the changes you enact will automatically lead to better and better runs of that success, you start down a bad road.

Watch Apple. Watch the iPad. Most important, watch yourself.