Two Years From Failure
We (Microsoft) are always two years away from failure. – Bill Gates
Today, in the teeth of historic, global disruption, Bill Gates’ words resonate with chilling prescience. But even in “normal times,” a business coasting on yesterday’s success was dancing with death. You don’t become Bill without understanding the truth of success: You must wake up every day and start from scratch, because your competitors certainly do. And whatever you accomplished as of yesterday is just that – yesterday’s news.
Consider this: There were 500 companies on the Fortune 500 in 1985 (advanced mathematical skills not required here). Today, 40% of those companies are gone. Finito. Oblivion.
Now, 1985 isn’t that long ago, and that’s an awful lot of companies (200 to be exact) whose logos once perched high on buildings throughout the world, but now lie in the dustbin of history. As the champagne and stock options flowed, those companies didn’t realize they were always only two years from failure.
Complacency breeds extinction, and one of the chief causes of it is structural. Corporations are simply not geared to measuring sins of omission. Nobody counts the losses from what might have been but never was. They only count the losses of what was and didn’t work. So it's safer for timid executives to reject great ideas (complacency not being measurable) than it is to turn ideas into reality and risk failure, which is measurable.
To quote another creative wunderkind, Bob Dylan, “… he not busy being born is busy dying.” So companies that assume they’re built to last, that do not continually re-think and reinvent themselves, that do not understand it’s all about the customer and not at all about themselves – those companies have put out the welcome mat for extinction.
So which brands get it, stay relevant day after day, and are busy being born? The envelope please.
Apple, of course, which repositioned itself from a hardware company to an entertainment company and seems incapable of not thrilling us with dazzling feats of design. Starbucks, which re-envisioned a mature commodity-based industry as a unique relaxation and entertainment experience. JetBlue, which brought humanity to the most dehumanizing industry since the invention of the rack. Westin, which reinvented your bed on the road by making it “heavenly.” And, as a quiet example, Masterlock, which made the leap from generic-looking padlocks to elegantly designed security products. (Their new sculptural looking locks have been likened to “iPods that lock.”)
So here’s an invitation to companies to be bold, root out complacency like the plague, and design a dazzling future by imagining dazzling products.
See you in two years.
