One of the hardest things a business owner has to do is build on success. 

That sounds ridiculous, of course.  Success gives you customers, revenue, employees and the opportunity to grow. But success also has a funny way of convincing us that we understand why we succeeded…when sometimes we don’t. 

Take this past weekend in college football in South Carolina, for example.  Even if you’re not a football fan, these squads are fascinating labs for organizational thinking, especially because the failures and successes are very visible from season to season.  This past weekend, the once-vaunted Clemson Tigers looked completely hapless against LSU.  What seemed obvious was the massive talent differential between the two teams….a differential that didn’t exist during Clemson’s reign at the top of the sport. 

Here’s one possible reason for that decline in talent (or talent development).  The Tigers may have confused the thing they did with the reason it worked. Whereas once they were the best evaluators in the country with high “hit” rates on their prospects, they’ve regressed to the mean on evaluating (or developing) which players are going to give them the best chance to win. 

One game doesn’t define an organization, but it seems clear this once elite organization isn’t producing what it once produced.  And from the outside, that’s because what once was a strength is no longer a strength.  Several reasons exists, but again, it’s possible that they mis-identified what made them successful in that particular “market.” 

The same thing happens in business. 

Your Customers May Know Your Strength Better Than You Do

There’s another wrinkle here: business owners don’t always have an accurate view of what customers value. You may think your company wins because of your technical expertise. Your customers may tell their friends that they use you because you’re easy to work with. 

You may think you’re competing on price. Your customers may actually be paying you because you are dependable. 

You may think people buy from you because of the product. They may be buying because you make the process easy. And sometimes the thing you consider a minor part of the business is the thing customers consider the most important. That’s why it can be useful to ask customers a very simple question: “Why did you choose us?” 

Not “Are you satisfied?” Not “Would you recommend us?” Ask why they chose you in the first place. The answers may surprise you, or it could at least give you an indication if you’re building on your strengths in the right way. 

Don’t Throw Away What Made You Successful

This doesn’t mean you should constantly reinvent your business. In fact, that can create an entirely different problem. There is a temptation, particularly when a business is growing, to assume that everything needs to change. 

It doesn’t. The point is to understand what should not change and what absolutely should. If your customers value personal attention, don’t assume you need to become a giant impersonal company just because you’re growing. Instead, figure out how to preserve personal attention as you grow. 

If customers value responsiveness, don’t necessarily insist that the owner answer every call forever. Build a system that allows the company to remain responsive without requiring the owner to personally handle everything. If customers value your expertise, don’t assume the only way to preserve that expertise is for one person to make every decision.  

In other words, protect the advantage, not necessarily the method.  Or, at least consider that the method itself needs to change to produce results.   

A Few Questions Worth Asking

If your business has been successful, it may be worth taking some time to figure out why. Here are a few questions to consider: 

  • Why do our customers actually choose us instead of our competitors? Not what you think they value. What do they actually tell you? 
  • Which things do we do because they create value, and which things do we do simply because we’ve always done them? Those can look remarkably similar from inside the business. 
  • If a competitor copied everything we currently do, what would still make us different? This can help identify whether you’ve built a real competitive advantage or simply developed a collection of good business practices. 
  • What worked when we were smaller that may no longer work as we grow? Some practices should become systems. Some should be delegated. Some should be eliminated entirely. 
  • What is the underlying principle behind the things that made us successful? This is hard to answer, but if you can get to this accurately, you can build on it. 

Keep the Advantage. Change the Method.

Successful businesses don’t necessarily stay successful by doing exactly what they did when they first found success. They stay successful by understanding why those things worked in the first place. 

The difference may sound subtle, but it matters. You don’t necessarily need to keep the process; you need to keep the result. You need to understand the reason it worked. 

Because once you confuse the two, you can spend a tremendous amount of time getting very good at doing something your customers don’t particularly care about anymore.