What Got You Here Won't Get You There
I read Marshall Goldsmith’s book, “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There”, a long time ago. It has always stuck with me. It remains on my shelf. As a reminder from a personal level, as well as an organizational level.
The gist - the skills or capabilities that make you great at one level are rarely the same ones you need at the next.
This sounds obvious, but most people don’t think about it until they’re stuck.
Take an entrepreneur. At the beginning, you do everything yourself. You sell, you deliver, you answer support emails, you handle the accounting. And that’s exactly what you should and need to do. But if your company starts growing, those same habits become a problem. The founder who insists on doing everything themselves slows the company down.
The same thing happens in any domain. The traits that make you successful in one phase start to work against you in the next. The perfectionist who gets every detail right in a small team becomes the bottleneck in a large one. The golfer who relies on natural talent alone stalls when the competition works to perfect their craft.
The hard part is recognizing when this shift happens. By the time you notice you’re stuck, it’s already too late. The key is to assume it will happen. Whatever you’re doing now, expect that you’ll need to unlearn it eventually.
This is harder than it sounds. People cling to what worked before because it feels safe. But growth means letting go of the old to make room for the new.
The good news is you don’t have to do it all at once. You just have to be willing to keep learning.
Lesson Learned: The next level is always different; getting their means being willing to change.