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Why do good companies stumble? I\u2019m talking about the organizations that were once on top. The ones that seemed to lead their category. Today, we\u2019d call them legacy brands or some euphemism that acknowledges the significance they once had and their staying power to stick around. However, somehow or another, they lost the plot along the way, and if only they had fixed this, changed that, or done this one thing, they would have continued winning. It\u2019s an if-then proposition straight out of an MBA case study. A clear villain with an easy fix.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n As satisfying as that framing might be, it\u2019s almost always never that simple. Instead, it\u2019s typically a litany of factors at play that undermine an organization\u2019s intentions and, ultimately, their outcomes and subsequent standing. And these factors are mainstay characters of change. So, the real question isn\u2019t, \u201cWhy do good companies stumble,\u201d but why do companies stumble navigating change?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n So, we invited Nick Tran on this week\u2019s episode of the From the Culture<\/em> podcast<\/a> to talk about change\u2014how organizations endure it, maneuver around it, and occasionally turn it into something useful. Tran is the kind of marketer CMOs name when asked what CMOs they admire. That\u2019s not surprising considering the brands he\u2019s led (i.e., Taco Bell, Samsung, Hulu, and TikTok) and the changes he\u2019s helped them navigate. Every one of those companies, he\u2019ll cheerfully admit, was either a dumpster fire when he arrived or about to become one. Now, as President and CMO of First Round Collective, he no longer thinks the pattern is a coincidence; he thinks it\u2019s a calling, which makes him the perfect person to talk to if we are to interrogate navigating change.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n What Tran said early in our conversation, almost as a throwaway, is the line I haven\u2019t been able to forget. Most companies have good instincts.<\/em> The leaders have experience that enables them to make good choices. Their understanding of who they are and who they serve was, at one point, at least, hard-won and clear. The reason they end up in trouble is rarely because their instincts disappeared but typically because the noise grew too loud and drowned out their instincts.<\/p>\n The noise is familiar. Board demands. Shareholder pressure that prioritizes the next twelve weeks instead of the next twelve years. Executives incentivized to prioritize their career over the sustainability of their stakeholders. The cacophony of these inputs\u2019 cumulative effect doesn\u2019t destroy a leader\u2019s good instincts; it just makes them increasingly less audible and harder to flow.<\/p>\n This is where our conversation with Tran throws its hardest punch, and it\u2019s the move I\u2019d recommend any leader navigating change steal immediately. You have to remove self. Death to ego.<\/em> You aren\u2019t running the company; you\u2019re a steward of it. It\u2019s the spine of what Robert Greenleaf called servant leadership<\/a>, and it remains countercultural for the same reason it always has: The C-suite is shaped by incentives that reward the opposite posture. For instance, by any measure, Tran has won the awards game. However, the stat that matters most on his scorecard is how many people who once worked for him have gone on to become CMOs themselves\u2014at the time of our conversation, the number was seven. Ego counts what a leader led. Stewards count who they grew. One focuses on self and others focuses on others, which inherently quiets the noise and makes a leader\u2019s instinct more pronounced.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n