What if the systems that made you successful wind up being the very systems that cause you to fail?
Consider the case of Pete. When he took over as CEO of a fast-growth firm things had been unraveling for a while. Revenue had grown, fast, but their systems and processes were failing to keep up. Behind the curtain was chaos, and it was starting to show in the numbers. Profit and revenue were declining. Pete worked quickly. He got the team together to make decisions; he codified processes, implemented upgrades, and established metrics to measure their progress. The company got back on track, and the financials were moving in the right direction.
Until they weren’t.
A new competitor was taking share away. The metrics that once drove accountability were now creating finger-pointing. It was hard for Pete to put his finger on the problem. The financials were still good, but the leading indicators like employee morale and customer engagement were going backward. Pete doubled down on his metrics to recapture the mojo, but it only seemed to make things worse.
What went wrong?