How to achieve sustainable success

Is success ever a “one time event?”

When we think of successful people, companies, and even sports teams, we don’t think of people who had one great idea, one excellent product, or a single outstanding game. We think of people who have made a difference over the entire course of their lives. We think of companies that bring new products to market year-after-year. We think about the sports franchises that created winning dynasties across decades or even a century of play.

And yet, in our daily lives as workers and managers and leaders, we are often way too willing to define success based on this quarter’s earnings, one project’s outcome, or one product’s sales figures.

On this episode of “Aim Higher,” we discuss what it truly means to be a leader with a sustained success mindset. Why does this matter? Because research shows, again and again, that the companies who create sustained success do so by focusing on a healthy tension between adhering to some important core values while also embracing change.

In other words, you need to understand both how you got to where you are and have a strong vision of where you’re leading your team to, as well.

During our discussion, Drew Bordas made a great comment about how direct interactions with customers can really help in this way. Listening to what’s going wrong—and right—with the people who use your products and services can give you some great, short-term ideas about things that you’re doing well and ways to improve. But if you listen long enough and to enough customers? You’ll start to see patterns. And those will lead to systemic changes that can improve the lives of all your customers.

How do you do that in your work and for your teams? How do you, as a leader, balance getting the “worries of the day” taken care of while remembering to look up at the horizon? My guests, as always, have some great ideas. Listen in and start thinking, today, about what success will look like for you when you look back in ten or twenty or even fifty years.

Image Credit: Edu Lauton