Self-Defeating Disease.

A case can be made that most successful individuals, institutions and nations are rarely defeated by others but find ways to defeat or weaken themselves to enable their own withering and dissolving.

In almost every case the same four indicators have been flashing for a while, but no one was paying attention.

The four symptoms of SDD (Self-Defeating Disease) are:

Incestuous thinking: A smaller and smaller group of decision makers with similar backgrounds and long tenure in the same place.

Cult replacing Culture: A cult either around a leader, a “way”, or a fashionable financial market meme (“everything as a service”, “data driven everything”, “streaming is the only way”, “We are AI!”)

Fear: Fear of speaking up, fear of change, or fear of opposing the leader or “the way”!

Overreach: Letting recent success make one lose perspective that most success is driven by luck and trends that can turn.

One key factor driving Self-Defeating Disease: Hubris.

A definition of Hubris:

Exaggerated Self-Perception: Leaders develop a magnified and embellished view of their own skills, capabilities, and importance.
Image Obsession: Individuals display a disproportionate concern with image and a relentless pursuit of personal glory.
Contempt for Feedback: Success often isolates executives, leaving them with fewer peers to monitor their decisions, which decreases their openness to critical feedback and breeds contempt for criticism.
Loss of Reality: Chronic power dynamics and unsubstantiated positive feedback from subordinates can cause a complete loss of contact with reality.

Psychological assessments distinguish hubris from narcissism, noting that while narcissism may be a stable personality trait, hubris syndrome is explicitly fueled by the exercise of power and past organizational successes.

Every one of us can slip into hubris and we should be aware of the following traits:

After a string of successes we can get high on our own supply and we begin to punch down, belittle competitors, and speak with a smirk.
We find ourselves shrinking our inner circle to two or three like-minded colleagues, creating an echo chamber of incestuous thinking and confirmation bias.
We punish dissent and enforce loyalty tests. It’s “this is the way” or the highway.

Antidote to Self-Defeating Disease

Since the best of talent and the best of companies can defeat themselves, we need to be wary when we spot the four symptoms of Incestuous thinking, cults, fear, and overreach.

And we must ensure that organizations and individuals can access remedies for curing SDD (Self-Defeating Disease):

1. Diversity: Diversity of backgrounds and thinking particularly in leadership teams are critical. If everybody thinks the same way, it can be dangerous. Disagreement and challenging points of view is what boards, external perspectives, and independently successful people bring to a company or to a person.

2. Building a case for the opposite: Whenever a key decision needs to be made, a team or individual should be charged with building a case for the exact opposite of what a leader or board are considering. This provides two benefits: First it allows one to make sure that group think does not disconnect us from reality since there is a reminder that we may be wrong. Second it helps us correct gaps in the thinking of our original recommendation. It is like stress testing our proposition.

Today AI is diminishing the importance of scale, reducing the ability to make money through friction or lethargy as agents scour for best deals, rates and unused subscriptions. AI might also eliminate apps and user interfaces and even reduce the value of first party data. So many people crowing about victory may discover they are in a totally different race than the one they think they are winning.

3. A blank piece of paper approach: Many times, individuals and companies find themselves in self-defeating positions because of a way of doing, a historic momentum, legacy costs, or structures and fixating on current category dynamics.

What if one was to launch a company or initiative with a blank sheet of paper with only three constraints: legal (whatever one does has to be legal), technological (it must be possible today), and economic (some breakeven or other financial constraint). Using only these constraints, what would one do to anticipate or meet a customer need?

4. The future comes from the slime and not the heavens: There are many benefits of being a leader, working at a very successful company, and being on the top of the world. The press fawns and friends’ gush. It gives us all a great rush. Important that we do not get too high on our fumes and begin to believe our flatulence smells like Chanel 5.

The future usually does not emerge from the high leader gatherings at Davos, The Allen Conference, or at TED, but rather where no one is looking or visiting. The Auto companies were looking at each other and they missed the rise of Chinese companies like BYD, Tesla and Uber. Procter and Gamble missed Dollar Shave Club. IBM missed Microsoft.

Every category will be likely disrupted by competitors outside it and benchmarking against current competitors only allows one to be less pathetic than other pathetic players.

Or let us remember just one characteristic to minimize self-defeat.

Humility.

One Single Thing.

8 years ago long before podcasts enjoyed their current popularity Dylan Conroy began The Ad Podcast. Now 500 episodes later, Dylan has begun a newsletter which is a two minute read on key takeaways from guests.

Antidote to Self-Defeating Disease

One Single Thing.

Self-Audit / Self-Agency.