When Success Became the Enemy

Back in 2011, I walked into a small construction company that had fire in their eyes.

They had maybe a dozen employees, but they weren’t just trying to survive, they were trying to build something that would outlast them. The owner looked me straight in the eye and said, “We don’t just want to hit our numbers. We want to do this right.”

So we rolled up our sleeves and built the foundation they needed. Clear vision. Aligned incentives. Real problem-solving skills. A roadmap everyone could follow. They didn’t just nod along, they practiced it. They lived it. And man, did it work!

They grew like crazy. New projects kept coming. Teams expanded. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. After a few years, I stepped back feeling proud of what we’d built together. They were flying, and I knew they had everything they needed to keep soaring.

Then in 2023, my phone rang. Same company. But the voice on the other end sounded exhausted.

“Jes, we need help. Everything feels broken.”

When I walked back into that building, I couldn’t believe what I saw. Over 600 employees now. Massive operation. But something was terribly wrong.

The energy that used to crackle through those halls had been replaced by frustration. Departments were working against each other instead of together. Simple decisions took forever. People were burned out, confused, and angry.

It was like walking into a house where all the furniture had been rearranged in the dark.

The Slow Leak Nobody Noticed

What happened wasn’t dramatic. There was no catastrophic failure, no scandal, no market crash that brought them to their knees.

It was something much quieter and more dangerous: success without maintenance.

As they grew, the systems we’d built together started to crack. The people who understood the original vision had either left or gotten promoted so far up they were no longer in the trenches. New hires came in by the dozens, but nobody was teaching them the culture that made everything work.

Corners got cut. “We’ll fix that later” became the company motto. The clear communication channels we’d established got clogged with bureaucracy. The vision that once united everyone became a poster on the wall that people walked past without reading.

They were still making money. They were still landing projects. But the soul of the company, the thing that made them special, was slowly suffocating under the weight of their own success.

The Truth About Organizational Decay

Here’s what kills me about situations like this: decay doesn’t announce itself with sirens and flashing lights. It’s the slow drip of missed conversations. The gradual disconnect between what leadership thinks is happening and what’s actually happening on the ground.

One day, you wake up and realize that everyone’s working incredibly hard but nothing feels easy anymore. Projects that used to flow smoothly now hit roadblock after roadblock. People who used to collaborate naturally now protect their turf. The excitement that once drove people to stay late and solve problems together gets replaced by clock-watching and finger-pointing.

It’s heartbreaking to watch, especially when you know how good it used to be.

The Choice That Changes Everything

But here’s what gave me hope when I walked back into that company: they didn’t just want a quick fix. They didn’t ask me to come in and tell them everything was fine.

They said, “Show us what we broke. Help us fix it.”

That’s the moment everything can change, not when you admit something’s wrong, but when you commit to doing the hard work of making it right again.

We had to go deeper this time. It wasn’t just about reinstalling the old systems. We had to help them understand how to protect and evolve their culture as they continued to grow. We had to bridge the gap between the veterans who remembered the old ways and the newcomers who needed to learn them. We had to rebuild trust that had been eroded by years of miscommunication and misaligned priorities.

It wasn’t easy. Some people had to change how they thought about leadership. Others had to give up habits that had become comfortable. Everyone had to admit that what got them here wouldn’t get them where they wanted to go.

But they did the work. And slowly, I started to see that old energy return.

The Warning in the Success

There’s no neutrality in business. You’re either moving toward the culture you want or drifting away from it. Growth without intention leads to chaos. Excellence without maintenance doesn’t last.

The companies that thrive long-term aren’t the ones that build great systems once. They’re the ones that build cultures capable of protecting and evolving those systems as they grow.

If that’s not happening in your organization, the signs are probably already there. The question isn’t whether drift will happen, it’s how long you’ll wait to do something about it.

Because by the time the symptoms become obvious to everyone, the damage is much harder to undo.

The Future is now

Jesus (Jes) Vargas is the Principal at DPMG Corp in Sacramento, CA. Jes and his team consult, coach and mentor business leaders in areas such as strategic planning, leadership development and Lean Thinking deployment. If you are concerned that there is not enough long-term strategic thinking going on in your organization, Jes can help. Call Jes at 916 712 6145. Or you can email him here.