Single Points of Failure

While the how to be more successful, self-help movement rages on, is anyone interested in the other side of the story?

Failure is a topic that no one likes to acknowledge directly. And for good reason. It’s painful, depressing and debilitating at times.

Rather than harp on the obvious, however, here is another way of viewing the issue.

Single points of failure, in the personal leadership brand context, refer to areas or attributes that everyone possesses, which can generate devastating outcomes if not managed properly. Examples: Bad tempers, poor treatment of people, cheating or, at a simplistic level, not doing what you say you will do.

Even success can become a single point of failure. Say you’re a top producer with a large client as a sole revenue source. That client, if not managed properly, can represent a single point of failure through your own doing or events out of your control.

If you are unable to relate in personal terms, consider admired companies such as General Electric, Microsoft and Wal-Mart. Single points of failure from a product or operations standpoint would probably be readily apparent. But what would be more difficult to find are single points of failure from a leadership and/or senior-level human capital perspective.

Great leaders and great companies know that if they don’t develop depth and knowledge capital across a range of competencies and industries their business will eventually cease to exist.

Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia or any of the other bankruptcy poster children prove the veracity of single points of failure. In each case, individual leaders failed miserably, and due to poor judgment, zero credibility and lost reputation, the respective businesses suffered. (Note: WorldCom luckily had turned to MCI in time to retain market value, but it’s taking awhile to figure out what that value represents. Adelphia is preparing for auction, but the company’s intrinsic value, if they ever had any, has been lost forever.)

Single points of failure also speak directly to why succession and team building are critically important. Boards of directors would be well served to study failure more closely instead of stamping their own definitions of success, or worse yet, turning to fads such as corporate social responsibility to cure their ills.

At an individual level, the challenge is to determine your own single points of failure and then identify strategies for managing the points over time.

In the meantime, keep reaching for the success stars. That remains the only surefire way to outrun failure.