Leadership: when success leads to failure

MedSurg Nursing, Oct, 1997 by Karlene Kerfoot

HAVE YOU EVER LOOKED forward to working with a well known and accomplished person but found that surprisingly, she/he was very closed-minded and rigid in her/his thinking? Were you expecting innovation, creativity, and lots of fresh thinking, but instead you found a sense that time had stood still for this person and her/his development was arrested at an earlier level? Have you experienced in your own career a plateau in your accomplishments where you cannot progress to new levels? Some of the most successful people (and companies) stall out. They come to a point where they cannot sustain the creative energy and innovative thinking for which they once were famous. A more serious situation, however, is when we cannot recognize that this is happening to us. Our self-perception is that we are doing as well as ever when, in fact, we are sliding backward as leaders.

Why does this happen? With success comes three common dangers that can transform leaders into noninnovative supporters of the status quo:

1. They interpret and evaluate the present day's events in terms of past successes.

2. Their thought processes become hard-wired in a paradigm that acts as a nonproductive filter of new information.

3. They loose a sense of humility and naivete, become egotistical, and value only their own opinions.

Interpreting Today's Events in Yesterday's Accomplishments

Unfortunately, we use a limited amount of storage capacity in our brains. When we constantly focus on the past and continually keep old memories alive in our brains, our concentration on the present is limited. Consequently, our potential storage capacity for new events is taken up with memories. Reflections of success are often more comforting than the realities of today. However, leaders who filter today's information through the paradigms of the past consume a lot of valuable brain energy in the process. These leaders also miss opportunities because they fail to see new trends and patterns that don't fit into the old patterns and memories of past paradigms. James (1996) notes that around the age of 45, many adults begin to cling to the past and react to future change and innovations as a threat. Unfortunately, for some leaders, the process starts sooner.

For example, if a nurse manager achieved success for many years with an orientation process, she may not be open to new orientation practices that her staff may learn about at a conference. New models, such as disease management, may automatically be rejected by the vice president of nursing because she cannot see the value in this endeavor since she is perfectly comfortable with the present reality.

Whenever you hear leaders continually talking about their past successes versus the future, this could be a clue that they might be living on past accomplishments. Your challenge is to sell your idea based on what could be an improvement of the past versus a revolutionary idea that has no relationship to this history. When we rest on our laurels too long, there is a tendency to fall through and hit bottom.

Brain Processes Become Hard-Wired

A second problem with success is that our routine thinking and behavior, which have allowed us to be successful in the past, can now become a detriment. We are continually assaulted with large amounts of data which must be analyzed in short periods of time. Our brains are constantly categorizing, cataloguing, and stereotyping information to process it quickly and store it in usable and easily retrieved patterns. With many successful experiences, this process of stereotyping and cataloging becomes automatic. But when we allow that to happen, we miss many opportunities to view new patterns.

For example, if you have learned the Management by Objectives process, or the CQI process, you can hard-wire this methodology in your brain and filter all information through these paradigms. There are many ways of managing and knowing. When someone with new fresh models or ideas talks in a group, they can be easily squelched by people who are hard-wired not to hear this information. Filters in our mind can be real dangers to progress. Bennis, Jagdish, and Lessem (1994) note that the kind of leaders we need are the people who think in open systems rather than in fixed, ideal states. These people avoid being trapped in historical stereotyped thinking.

Thomas Kuhn (1970) wrote about three phases of paradigm shift. The first phase is the period of debate during which we challenge previously held beliefs. The second phase is an actual breakdown of reality models. Finally, the third phase consists of developing alternatives and considering ideas we formerly rejected. Successful leaders continually put themselves through this process to make sure they stay on the leading edge. When leaders stop inviting dialogue, critique, and intellectual challenge, both from within their thoughts and from others, they begin a slow descent into their death as a leader.

Egotistical Invincibility

A third problem is that success can often bring a sense of egotistical invincibility. This is especially true when the person has experienced accelerated successes with no failures in between. It is easy to begin to think that you are pretty good at what you do. For example, the nurse practitioner who has a string of diagnostic successes stops reading the literature because she doesn't see anything new and consequently misses relevant information. The vice president of nursing begins to believe that she knows more than anyone else in her nursing organization and doesn't listen to valuable feedback. The director of home health shuts her mind to the new models of care that rotate nurses from the inpatient setting to home care because she knows, with all of her years of experience, that this model just won't work.