Business Success Starts Where You’re Not Looking!

Business success is measured in numbers. But where does it actually start?

I’m not saying that looking at numbers doesn’t have any value – it does. But let me offer a different perspective:

Business success doesn’t start with strategy decks or performance metrics. It starts with what we embody, then becomes something we generate.

Every business is built on a network of conversations – internal and external, formal and informal, aware and unaware. Like our individual habits, they live below the waterline, running on automatic. They shape culture, drive decisions, and ultimately define the level of success a business and any individual can achieve.

The culture of any company is simply the sum of its people’s habits. If individuals shift, the organization follows.

Like most habits, they ignore what was decided in the last strategy meeting. They keep running, shaping behaviors and outcomes – whether we notice or not.

No strategy can succeed without addressing the habits that drive it. As Peter Drucker famously said:

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Shifting these automatic patterns of conversation is the essence of sustainable change. A new level of success anywhere begins with “making the invisible visible”, as Marcus Marsden puts it – first within ourselves, then in our organizations.

So, here’s the real question: If the current level of success in your business and life is a mirror, what does it reflect about your personal leadership? And what about the network of conversations?

Culture generates results. Results reveal culture.

Success is a mirror. What do you see? 

And: Are you willing to look?