Mark Hurd, CEO of HP, said in a recent article "the day you feel like you've won, you ned to drive out of the parking lot and not come back." He's done an impressive job at HP, and his comment is right on, at least half-way. Of course he's right, resting on laurels of accomplishment is a sure approach to failure. But there's more to it than that; another dimension.
We come into a new situation, discard the bad decisions made by our predecessors, deal with the issues in the inevitable "decision backlog", and make good decisions and progress. Then human nature sets in. We had no vested interest in our predecessors' decisions; but we do in our own. A year or two later, some of our decisions may no longer be the correct ones, either because no one is ever 100% or because circumstances have changed. If we could clone ourselves and come in again as a new CEO, some of those strategy, or tactic, or personnel, or investment decisions would be changed. Avoiding resting on laurels of accomplishment is not enough; we need to discard ownership in our past decisions and periodically look at the entirety of our decision package with fresh eyes. When the time is right, we need to fire ourself, go to our car in the parking lot and say "so long", go home and think "what will my next CEO adventure be?", and hypnotize ourselves into thinking that tomorrow is truly a new day; just as new as the very first day in this assignment.
Your staff will be amazed when you say we need to totally review all capital plans, or reassess committments we've made to research, or think through whether the organization that we just put in place a year ago truly works, etc. But "boss, you already made all those decisions over the last year", they'll think or say. You respons, saying to yourself and especially to your ego; "wasn't me!!"
In the next several weeks, the merits and tactics of starting over, beginning again, firing yourself and hiring your clone, call it what you will, will fill our pages.
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