He was speaking in reference to when in the late 1970s, two individuals by name Tom Peters and Robert Waterman decided to do a piece of research on successful American companies.

They selected the top 100,000 companies in America, studied them and in the end identified 43 companies which by any performance indicator were the best in America but by ten years time, all the companies had disappeared except for eight and today, only six of those 43 companies are still around.

Professor Richardson pointed out that there were lots of lessons to be learnt from this story for individuals who wanted to manage companies, lead companies, be visionary, and bring great results.

“If the best companies in America can disappear within 10 years, then the first lesson is that success in business is never permanent,” he stated.

“The fact that you are doing well today does not guarantee that 10 years from now, you still be around,” he added.
He said another lesson which could be learnt was that success itself could actually lead to failure.

“We have the human weakness, when you are very successful, you become complacent and a lot of these companies actually folded because they were so good that they became very complacent,” he mentioned.

“Success is never permanent and success can go into your head and cause you to fail,” he said.

Leadership qualities

Speaking on the Springboard, Your Virtual University, a radio programme on Joy Fm in a playback of his presentation at last year’s festival of ideas conference, Prof Richardson said “great leaders envision a better future, develop strategies and align people behind them to achieve the vision. Leadership is the most important ingredient and without good leadership, nothing can be achieved. With leadership, everything can be achieved as leadership is cause, everything else is effect.”

“National progress, economic development, organisational progress, company progress do not come as a result of chance, good luck or magic. Progress and success always come from efforts that people put together. For this century, in order to be able to develop a nation or make sure a company does well and survives, leadership is becoming increasingly crucial,” he said.

“To develop a competitive advantage in a world that is globalising, a world of mega competition where the winner wins all, we need leadership that is able to develop ideas, develop vision, excite and motivate people and rally them behind them to achieve the success,” he added.
he was speaking on the topic, Visionary and strategic leadership.

Change of systems

Professor Richardson also urged business leaders to change their systems of doing things if they wanted to be successful in today’s competitive world.

“In today’s world, sometimes you have to run faster just to stand still. In order for any company to succeed in this century, managers and leaders must realise that they cannot do the same things and expect better results,” he said.

He noted that every system was perfectly designed to produce the results that it was producing today, hence if a business was not doing well, it was a reflection of the system that its leaders were operating.

“You keep getting what you keep getting because you keep doing what you keep doing. If you want better results, then the systems must change,” he said.