Re-invention is the secret sauce

There are millions of articles, books, etc. about secrets to success.  Many read a book that shares Warren Buffet’s investment secrets, emulate that and then hope to succeed.  Said Mr Buffet himself is known to say that he is a follower of Dale Carnegie’s “How to win friends and influence people”.  Then there are articles that tell us that the world is changing at such a pace that whatever resulted in success yesterday is, well, history.

My observation is that there is something different for on-going success.  It is called re-invention.  Those who do it well remain relevant in a changing world, some have a mixed bag and those who do not succeed may disappear into obscurity.

Here are a few examples from my lifetime…

Hillary Clinton has gone from First lady to Senator to failed Presidential candidate to Secretary of State to so-far-fav for 2016 President with intermittent scandal along the way.  Maggie Thatcher, on the other hand, struggled to re-invent herself post-PM and ended up a sad figure played by Meryl Streep.  May the Iron Lady rest in peace.

Al Gore went from VP to the guy that lost to Bush in court to Environmentalist, winning an Oscar and the Nobel prize over the years…

Madonna went from Material girl to Sex kitten to B-rated actress to Ms Peron to Easter Mystic to American girl next door to Ms Ritchie to Mother figure to Britney to Kabbalah to who-knows-what-else…  Victoria Beckham did Posh Spice, then Mrs Becks and now is involved with the design and trim of Range Rovers.

Here at home, Nelson Mandela (terrorist, prisoner, peacemaker, president, father of a nation, AIDS activist) and Oscar Pistorius (Paralympic golden boy, fighter for equal rights, Olympic athlete, gun-loving bad boy, girlfriend killer – the last bit being intentional or not) come to mind.

Companies and brands go through the same.  Apple was the computer maker for eccentrics and became the provider of cool multimedia gadgets – disrupting the music, movie, book, telephone, newspaper industries along the way. Microsoft was IBM’s operating systems supplier, then became the world’s computing power, failed at emulating Apple more than once, succeeded at console gaming and still is what billions of workers in business have on their screen every day.

Volkswagen is another great example.  It started way before my lifetime intended as the people’s car for Nazis, post-WW2 became the people’s car of the recovering West Germany, the car of choice for hippies in the 60s, the go-faster yuppie boy racer’s car in the 80s…  As the German people became more affluent and their tastes became more discerning, VWs became more and more upmarket to the point where the VW Group now owns cheaper brands in Europe (Skoda and SEAT), de-content their cars for the cheap-and-cheerful Americans (current Jetta and US-market German Camry called Passat) and regurgitate older tech for the developing world’s people (the Golf Mk 1 as the CitiGolf and the Polo Mk 4 as the Polo Vivo here in South Africa;  as well as some similar interesting things in Brazil and China). 

Mercedes-Benz went through Hillary’s Lewinsky era when it replaced “Engineered unlike any other” with the not-so-reliable “Future of the Automobile”.  Thankfully it has returned to its former glory as “The Best or Nothing”.  BMW went from the stylish “Ultimate Driving Machine”, gained some dubious styling, then brought “joy” to the world and now is all Al Gore with “Efficient Dynamics” – all a bit confusing.

What do I learn from this for my own personal life?  Well, this is what I have been pondering about the last few months.  So, watch this space…