The Idea in Brief
High performance companies rethink their strategies and reinvent their operating models before debilitating stalls set in.
In order to successfully jump from one financial S curve to the next, they do three things differently from their less-successful peers:
Focus on the edges. They pay attention to the edge of the company and the edge of the market, to avoid the myopia that long-running success engenders.
Shake up the top team. They change the makeup of the senior team earlier, and more radically, than their competitors do.
Maintain surplus talent. When other companies are cutting staff to cut costs, they go in the opposite direction: They cultivate serious talent with the capacity to grow new businesses.
Sooner or later, all businesses, even the most successful, run out of room to grow. Faced with this unpleasant reality, they are compelled to reinvent themselves periodically. The ability to pull off this difficult feat—to jump from the maturity stage of one business to the growth stage of the next—is what separates high performers from those whose time at the top is all too brief.
