He was the best in the world.
Not 10. Not top 5. The best. Envied.
Tiger Woods had just won the Masters by 12 strokes. At 21 years old.
Most people would have ridden that wave for years.
But Tiger did something almost no one understood:
He broke his swing. Rebuilt it from scratch. On purpose.
He knew something most people miss when they’re winning:
What’s working today won’t work forever.
And the better things are going, the harder that is to see.
Because success hides tomorrow’s failure.
Andy Grove saw it early.
At Intel, memory chips were still making money. But the market was shifting. Japanese manufacturers were undercutting prices.
Grove asked a brutal question:
If I was fired today, what would my replacement do?
The answer: get out of memory. Shift to microprocessors.
It was painful. But it not only saved the company, that question fueled its next 30 years of growth.
Bill Belichick let go early.
Even in Super Bowl seasons, he’d trade or release star players before their decline.
To fans, it looked ruthless.
To Belichick, it was discipline.
He wasn’t building a great team once. He was building a great team again and again.
That meant spotting decline before it showed up in the stats.
If it’s not broke, don’t fix it
When things are going well, it’s easy to tell ourselves:
- Don’t overthink it.
- Don’t mess with success.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it.
We’ve all said it at some point in our lives.
Ironically, that mindset is exactly how things do break.
What’s working now might be hiding what’s not.
And the longer we wait to look, the harder it is to fix.
A question that changes everything.
A few years ago, I became aware of a business that asked this simple question:
- Three years from now, assume our current sources of revenue are gone. How are we still in business?
This was not a company that was struggling. In fact, by all measures it was a company that was wildly succeeding.
The question is a powerful one; if we use it properly.
Candidly, the question is one that is difficult to fully embrace.
We can’t really envision our revenue drying up so quickly.
Yet, who among us could have imaged:
- Kodak, the leader in photography, becoming obsolete in an industry it created. Kodak invented the digital camera. But it didn’t sell film, so they buried it.
- Blackberry, THE leader in enterprise smartphones disappearing from view. They firmly embraced their keyboard led approach which drove extreme growth…until they ran right off a cliff.
- Blockbuster’s death grip on video rentals becoming the noose that killed them. They passed on buying Netflix…more than once.
All these failures are obvious with hindsight. At the time, they didn’t embrace the idea of a future without their current revenue stream.
They weren’t caught off guard. They ignored the signs. They were winning and they believed they always would.
Success became the trap.
The Takeaway
Success is not a finish line.
It’s a moment that tempts us to stop asking questions.
But smart teams don’t just celebrate when they’re ahead.
They investigate.
They ask:
- What’s really driving this?
- What could break?
- What are we not seeing?
They challenge the engine while it’s running — not after it stalls.
Try This
Look at one area where things are going well.
- Revenue is climbing
- The team is hitting goals
- Customers seem happy
Now, ask two simple questions:
- What are the main contributors to this success?
- What would happen if those contributors stopped work?
That’s where to look.
That’s where the risks AND the opportunities are lurking.
Dig while it’s still working. Not after it stops.
