Sustaining Success. Don't be a 'One Hit' wonder.

It’s one thing to achieve an initial success in any field, and quite another to sustain it over a substantive period. No matter what the field, be it science and engineering, business in general, sport, entertainment, or any other field, the different between a ‘one hit wonder’ and a sustainably successful performer is deserving of some reflection, and consideration of investing in the elements that lead to longer term success.

In business, how have companies such as CSL, Apple, Toyota, Microsoft, Proctor and Gamble been able to sustain success over decades, against fierce competition? It is a verified fact that relatively few businesses sustain positions of industry leadership beyond a decade, yet the companies above have defied the seemingly natural forces that cause most businesses to go through a lifecycle of growth, maturity, then decline. Apple is a very interesting example, whereby many commentators thought that Steve Jobs’ demise would lead to a diminishing of Apple’s market leadership. But Apple has continued strongly in the decade since Jobs died, clearly based on much more than his personal driving leadership and pursuit of innovation and quality excellence. In Apple, three things are evident that have provided this continuous success: these are constancy of core values and purpose, disciplined systems, and innovation capability. From these, Apple gets to win in the ‘war for talent’, create a stream of innovative products and services, and stay competitive and attractive to its loyal customers.

Toyota has much in common with Apple, having had its same core values for over 60 years, with a relentless drive for creating superior quality and value for its customers. CSL, perhaps Australia’s most successful company with a sustainable global footprint, has focussed similarly on a highly disciplined approach to it supply chain and its systematic innovation.

Core values and systematic innovation have also characterised the most successful consulting engineering businesses that I am aware of, including British, American, and Australian firms that have had lasting success over more than five decades.

All these businesses have a culture of humility, a strong service orientation, and a dedication to renewal and innovation.

"We have seen in sports and politics that arrogance is nearly always a step or two before failure, while longevity of success is usually a function of continued, steely motivation combined with great talent and a great system.”

They enjoy and indeed celebrate their success, but not too much, meaning that they do not fall prey to a sense of hubris, that can more commonly be seen before a fall. We have seen in sports and politics that arrogance is nearly always a step or two before failure, while longevity of success is usually a function of continued, steely motivation combined with great talent and a great system. Consider Steve Waugh, Ian Chappell, Tiger Woods, Muhammad Ali, John Howard, Gough Whitlam, Geoff Kennett, Gladys Berejiklian and Donald Trump as contrasting examples, some of whom retired with dignity and grace, and others less so.

In entertainment, why have the Rolling Stone, Tony Bennett and Bob Dylan had success over some 50 years, while other highly talented musicians faded quickly? Once again, we can observe motivation and discipline at play, and if anyone thinks it is luck, please consider the old adage, sometimes ascribed to Thomas Jefferson, ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’.

Sustainability and success

Success can breed further success, up to a point, and seemingly if certain other factors, mentioned above are present. Talented people are drawn to highly successful companies such as those listed above, just as the world’s best soccer players want to play for Barcelona, Real Madrid, Liverpool, PSG and the Manchester teams. The global fan base translates into merchandise sales, TV rights, ticket sales and cash flow that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, that good managers can sustain over decades. At the heart of such longevity of success is stakeholder engagement and loyalty, which is a two-way street. Just as Jurgen Klopp focusses on his Liverpool players who always focus on doing it for the fans, Toyota is focused on respect for its employees who do it so well for their customers. In contrast, we cannot say the same for our major financial services companies or Crown, given the Royal Commissions’ findings of recent times.

For consulting engineers and other professional service firms, we can gain a great deal from embracing the relatively new framework of ESG (environment, society, governance), that is fast becoming an acceptably more mature approach to gaining and sustaining success in stakeholder engagement, satisfaction, and mutual success. I have scored CSL and Toyota as very high on the many categories(1) of ESG, and just as the world’s professional investors are attracted to them, these companies find that investing in their ESG capability elements payoff for all their stakeholders, including shareholders.

In summary, sustained success requires a few key ingredients, that the Rolling Stones, Steve Waugh, CSL, Toyota and Apple have had in large amounts. Steve Jobs once famously said, ‘Stay hungry’, stay foolish’ which I interpret to be about strong motivation and not getting too ‘self-important’ and arrogant about your success. These are necessary but not sufficient conditions for large complex organisations operating in today’s challenging world. Compare and contrast the success of Jack Welch at GE and Don Argus at NAB, whose very successful large organisations declined significantly after they retired, with Toyota, Apple and CSL that were all robust to changes of senior leadership. The latter group had two further strengths beyond the capabilities of particularly talented individual executives and leadership teams. They have mature, stable values; and systems to enact those into value propositions involving productivity, reliable quality and innovation, that provide stakeholder engagement (broadly including environment and society), in a virtuous circle of mutual success. These systems include and are also beyond efficient and standard ways of conducting processes and projects: they include higher levels of systems, such as approaches to leadership development, innovation, continuous improvement, succession planning, resource allocation, risk management, performance management, ESG and strategy making.

Danny Samson is Professor of Management at the University of Melbourne. He has been working with Consult Australia since 1986, offering short-courses to members. Comments welcome to: d.samson@unimelb.edu.au

1. Comprehensive ESG scoring includes ESG leadership and E, S, and G practices and processes, and results, https://varcis.com/varcis-esg-page/.