Your next wild success

Beyond your wildest success lies your next even wilder success. Well, of course, but what I mean is that, you’ve got to go beyond all of the strategies that created your last success, and get back to the values that were behind it. Thereby lies the clues to your next success.

It was Hugh MacLeod’s tweet last night that got me thinking about this.

Google got into social for the same reason MSFT got into Internet ie Because they had to, not because of the love of it.

To which my response was: I get what you’re saying, but did they really have to?

I think not. I think they got into it because they’re desperate.

The Google boys have an amazing success on their hands. They have contributed more to the evolution of man kind than most of us can dream of.

But beyond their wildest success lies the next even wilder success. But in order to get there, they’re going to have to let go of all of the strategies that made them successful, and return to the values that made them create that success.

Those values were decidedly not about making money, raising their stock price, or even doing business at all. They wanted to sell the technology for a mere $1M to Yahoo. But fate forced their hand, because the Universe had something bigger in store for them. And they chose to listen, and for that we are forever grateful.

Imagine if Steve Jobs had stopped after creating the original Mac and just tried to milk it for all it’s worth. Well, in fact, that happened with the CEOs that came after Steve. Imagine he’d stopped after Pixar and just started milking that for all it was worth, trying to make the stock price go up by getting into adjacent markets - games, devices, whatnot. Imagine he’d stopped after the next success and never created the iPod. Or the iPhone. Or the iPad.

I truly believe the Google boys have another contribution (or two or three) of equal magnitude to the original Google in store. (And no, it’s not self-driving cars or the Google Goggles.)

But getting there doesn’t come by itself, and it doesn’t come through linear thinking, through the same thinking that got them where they are today. It takes shedding all strategies and reviving their fundamental values.

I sincerely hope they’ll do it.