Your Success Might Be Creating Problems You Can’t See

In the early 1920s, car manufacturers faced a frustrating problem: They wanted to build more powerful engines, but “engine knocking” kept getting in the way. Fuel igniting unevenly inside an engine created violent vibrations that damaged its components. The finest minds scratched their heads over how to get more power without sacrificing reliability.

Meanwhile, refrigerator manufacturers faced a problem of their own: Some chemicals used in early refrigerators were toxic or highly flammable. A leak could turn a household appliance into a serious hazard. Finding a safer refrigerant could make refrigeration more practical for homes and businesses.

Enter Thomas Midgley Jr., an American engineer who was working at General Motors.

Midgley discovered that adding lead to the fuel could suppress engine knocking. Later, he’d help develop Freon, a refrigerant far less toxic and flammable than many alternatives in use at that time. And just like that, two stubborn engineering problems appeared to be solved.

Manufacturers respected him and adopted his work, and both products became commercial successes. For his work, the American Chemical Society awarded him the Priestley Medal, their highest honor.

You could look at that record and reasonably conclude he had done an excellent job. Entire industries were growing because of him, and he’d earned recognition from his peers.

Would you agree that by the usual measures, Midgley had an extraordinary career? Well … then the other shoe dropped.

Leaded petrol was found to spread toxic lead through the exhaust, exposing generations of people to a metal whose harmful effects we now know better about. Decades after Freon and related chemicals became widespread, scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) damaged the Earth’s ozone layer.

Midgley died in 1944, before scientists discovered the damage to the ozone layer. In Midgley’s defence, he could not have predicted every consequence, but his story begs the question for anyone who has built a successful business: What if the very thing that made you successful is also creating costs you haven’t accounted for?

When success hides the full cost

Warning signs around leaded petrol had already appeared during its early production, but the “cost” was ignored, and it remained in widespread use for decades. Freon seemed safe and harmless at first glance, and CFCs were widely used in refrigeration and elsewhere before scientists truly understood how they were damaging the ozone layer.

I think there’s a shared lesson in this about the limits of the original measure of success: A product can work as intended while creating consequences its original purpose never required anyone to consider.

Business owners can fall into a similar pattern. You find something that works, so you do more of it. Being available at all hours helps win customers, so you keep answering calls. Making every important decision helps the business move quickly, so you stay involved as the team expands and you keep accepting work because demand is strong.

Each decision may have solved a problem and helped you get where you are. The costs can emerge later, as the business grows and when you know better.

The habits that built your business can become expensive

Early in a company’s life, personal involvement can be exactly what it needs.

• You’re available? You’re trustworthy.
• If decisions go through you, you can make them quickly and keep work moving.
• Taking on extra responsibility helps the business survive.

The difficulty comes when those habits continue long after the circumstances that made them useful have changed. The founder who once needed to approve every important decision may now be bottlenecking the team. The availability that once won clients leaves no room to switch off. The behavior that helped build the business can become expensive as the business grows.

Sometimes, getting personally involved is exactly what a business needs. You step in, solve a problem, establish a process or build a relationship that gets things moving. But was your involvement meant to be permanent? What began as a short-term solution can quietly become an ongoing responsibility, until you’re spending more time operating the business than leading it.

So now, you have more customers bringing more revenue, but also more complexity. A new market opens up, but demands more travel and attention. The business becomes more profitable while the owner’s time and energy become harder to protect, and their family is neglected.

Do you see where this is heading?

In my coaching conversations with entrepreneurs, I often return to the difference between what a business produces and what it demands from the person running it. Revenue, profit and growth are easy to track. The cost to a founder’s health, relationships, judgment or freedom can be harder to quantify, so it may go unexamined for years.

A business can be winning by its own measures while the person who built it pays a price they never intended to pay.

None of this is the business owner’s fault, because it’s particularly easy to miss when the numbers look good. A crisis forces you to take a step back and review, but who stops to question continued success? Nobody.

When revenue is growing, and customers are happy, why feel pressured to question the way you’re running the business, even if the arrangement is becoming harder to sustain?

Measure what success is costing you

You don’t need to become suspicious of every ambitious decision; building a business requires risk, investment and choices whose consequences cannot be predicted perfectly. But you do need to ask whether your measures of success account for enough of the picture.

Imagine reviewing a new business initiative. You’d probably examine the expected revenue, costs, staffing, return, etc. Would you also ask what it will demand from you personally, what it might displace or whether the business will become more dependent on your involvement?

Tomorrow, choose one part of your business that is performing well. It might be your fastest-growing service, a major client relationship or a process that depends on you being constantly available.

Write down three things: what it produces, what it demands and what it displaces. Then consider whether the arrangement remains sustainable as the business grows. Is it delivering the results you need today at the expense of what the business will need to sustain those results over the longer term? Or can it continue producing the same results without placing increasing demands on you, your team or the resources the business needs elsewhere?

Time spent managing one opportunity is time unavailable for another. Energy spent resolving routine decisions cannot also be spent thinking about the future. An arrangement that works financially may place demands on family life that nobody intended when it began.

Then ask yourself what has changed since you first made that decision. Perhaps the business has grown, your responsibilities have shifted, regulations have changed, or a risk you once considered acceptable now deserves another look. Would you make the same decision today, knowing what you know now?

If the answer is yes, carry on with a clearer understanding of the exchange. If something has changed, you have an opportunity to reconsider the arrangement while you still have options. You might choose to delegate a decision, renegotiate a client relationship or stop doing something that no longer justifies the demands it places on you.

The point is to make that choice while you still have options, rather than waiting for circumstances to make it for you.

You worked hard to build the business you have. You deserve to understand what it gives you, what it asks of you and whether that exchange still makes sense. Success deserves examination even when everything appears to be going well. Sometimes the most important decision a business owner makes is to look beyond the results that got them here.

In the early 1920s, car manufacturers faced a frustrating problem: They wanted to build more powerful engines, but “engine knocking” kept getting in the way. Fuel igniting unevenly inside an engine created violent vibrations that damaged its components. The finest minds scratched their heads over how to get more power without sacrificing reliability.

Meanwhile, refrigerator manufacturers faced a problem of their own: Some chemicals used in early refrigerators were toxic or highly flammable. A leak could turn a household appliance into a serious hazard. Finding a safer refrigerant could make refrigeration more practical for homes and businesses.

Enter Thomas Midgley Jr., an American engineer who was working at General Motors.