As a kid I was a huge fan of the Rocky movies. Who doesn’t like a good underdog story. In Rocky III however Rocky wasn’t an underdog. In the third installment of the series Rocky is on top of the game, he’s the champ, he’s rich and doesn’t really have any challenges (so he thinks). Rocky appears to have everything he wants and like many other successful people/organizations he has become complacent. Rocky eventually loses to a younger, hungrier fighter because he loses the “eye of the tiger”. It’s really interest how this movie parallels what happens with many organizations or companies when they lose the “eye”. A lot of companies spend way too much time trying to re-engineer processes or salvage aging product lines even in the face of an onslaught of technology advances. These companies get too comfortable in doing things the way they’ve always done them and watch their companies fall behind. The scary part is that the more successful you become the more susceptible you become to this problem. Since we all know their is no such thing as permanent reality, how can a company keep the “eye of the tiger”?

• Make yourself obsolete before someone else does. It’s far better for you to decide to move into a new business than to be forced into a new business by a competitor.
• Look for new opportunities. The rate of change and lower barriers to entry make it easy for smaller new companies to “try” new things. Make it a habit to keep some type of R&D at the forefront of your business.
• Don’t avoid challenges. Rocky’s nemesis in Rocky III was a guy named Clubber Lang, and whether intentional or not Rocky dodged him for a long time in the movie. Don’t shy away from a challenge. Taking the easy road all the time will make your organization weak.
• Don’t be afraid to throw out an old process. When we were building the first dialer for the SBC Yahoo dial and DSL kits we started working on an legacy code set that had been the basis of the Prodigy dialer for years. Within 2 weeks the manager who was running project for this came to me and said “Let’s throw it out and start from scratch”. Now traditional wisdom said this was foolish so initially I was a little skeptical as to whether it was the best choice. Needless to say throwing it out proved to be the right choice. Don’t spend a lot of time re-engineering old processes. Maybe it’s time to put that horse out to pasture and go with the new stud.

History tells us that making yourself obsolete before others do is good…Take a look at Fedex vs. The US postal service, CNN vs. The big three networks, IBM vs. Microsoft…