Interesting question from LinkedIn
How do you avoid becoming complacent in your business finances, even in times of success?
Answers
Andrew Grove is quoted as saying: "Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive."
If this person is complacent, maybe it is time for them to get paranoid that someone or some company will be happy to take their place in the market.
My answer for this person would be how bad do you want to fail? Once people become complacent they wind up enjoying their past successes while producing nothing worthwhile for future success. When the business finances are doing well, maybe it is time to perform an M&A of a competitor. Perhaps the answer could be to invest in philanthropic ventures, joint ventures, and other new challenges that can make a difference in the world.
When a business is experiencing success there is another business below them that are waiting for them to fail so that the market can be overtaken.
When a business is at the bottom it has no place to go but up. When a business is at the top is has only one way to go.
If complacency = boredom, mix it up.
Sounds simple, but nothing is that simple... Maybe the changes are personnel, maybe its entering new business ventures, maybe its starting a bowling night; maybe its putting aside the "we've always done ti this way" mentality and looking at possibly re-engineering, whatever the change, when the company starts seeing differences from the same old same old, complancey should be alleviated.
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