After years of effort, revenue is pouring into your company. An abundance of resources are now available to do more for your employees, invest in R&D, expand into new markets and finally get that in house barista. You’ve arrived!
While this is a brilliant situation to be in, it does come with risk. When companies are successful, they tend to focus far less on fixing internal problems and optimizing their operations. Who cares about making things 20% better when you can already afford an in-house chef and yoga instructor? Why worry about inefficiency and operational issues when you can simply hire more people to make things work? Why focus on learning from failure when there is more than enough money available to gloss over any issue? Success, and the abundance of resources that comes with it, tends to breed complacency.
When your business is doing well, take the time to focus on optimizing everything you do. While it’s not exciting, doing it during a downturn is so much worse.