Examine success as much as failure
Harvard Business Review has posted something right up our alley: “Why Leaders Don’t Learn From Success”
Also, the HBR essay links to a similar discussion of how Pixar avoids being brainwashed by its own success (something I had always wondered about—they seem too consistently successful): “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity”.
I disagree. I think there’s too much focus on the ultra successful outliers, giving people little information on how the average person who achieved the goals they want to achieve went about doing it.
My impression is that people will frequently try to study the successes of others to try to imitate them, but as the article suggests, will less often study the factors that lead to their own success than factors that lead to their failure.
As the linked article is actually saying: Inside businesses, there’s a tendency to assume success is luck or “I’m just such a genius.” The question “where did we go right?” is too infrequently asked. Perhaps it is luck or it is genius, but there’s never a postmortem to answer which and thus better plan for the future.
Usually it is better to examine failures more. This is partly due to the asymmetry between creation and destruction. Only the paranoid survive. This is also why people tend to have bad dreams.
There is a big difference between a lucrative monopolistic position (created by intellectual-property law and the huge costs of designing and fabbing microprocessors) and many of the other situations firms find themselves in.
Also, I do not see how your link supports your position. Is Grove not saying that he found himself in a postion in which if Intel had failed even once, it would never have recovered its greatness? How is that