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The One Sign Something Is About To Go Wrong--And What You Can Do Before It Does

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I get to speak to business school students every once in a while and I love to take questions at the end of my talk.

Interacting with smart people—and the kids are invariably bright—always makes you better.

I got my favorite question the other day.

I was talking to second year students who were planning on being entrepreneurs, and one of them asked if there was a way to know if an idea is going to be successful. He had a vested interest in asking the question. While he was confident about the company he was planning to build, he was looking for reassurance.

"Let me use the speaker's prerogative to answer a different question," I said.  "While I haven't found a fool proof formula to predict success, I know I have come up with a way to tell when something is going to go horribly wrong.

“That is going to occur immediately after you become complacent.”

I have never seen it fail.

The moment you think you have nailed it—you believe your product or service is perfect; you have mastered everything there is to know about leading their organization—something or someone is going to upset your proverbial apple cart.

For example, a new competitor will enter the market with a new way of doing things.

I am sure that Blockbuster thought everything was fine even when Netflix first came along.  The large box consumer electronic stores were doing quite nicely and remained unconcerned when an increasing number of people starting shopping their stores, asking lots of questions about the merchandise and then leaving empty handed (so that they could buy the product cheaper online.)

Or there will be a management challenge that you didn’t see coming.  (“Wait a second! It looks like these Millennials want to be managed differently than all the baby boomers we have in our ranks.”)

You have two choices when you face these kind of situations.

You can assume the new information/problem/challenge is an aberration and there is nothing to worry about.  (People will always want to rent movies from a freestanding store; or in the case of the big box stores “this Internet shopping thing is just a fad.)

As for management challenges you can simply say: “These new workers will just have to get used to the way we have always done things. Our systems are perfect the way they are.”

Or you can take every potential change to the marketplace seriously.

No, not every new entrant or new idea could put you out of business, but it only takes one significant threat as Blockbuster and the consumer electronic stores learned the hard way.

The problem with worrying about every threat and every change in the marketplace is that you can never become complacent. You can never truly relax and enjoy what you have accomplished.

Accept that.

The alternative is becoming obsolete or irrelevant.

While it is tiring—because you can never rest on your well-earned laurels—it is far better to be vigilent.

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Paul B. Brown is co-author of Just Start published by Harvard Business Review Press. 

Please note his blog now appears every Wednesday and Saturday, with the occassional extra post like today. 

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