Predictable Success is a state reachable by any group - an organization, business, division, department, project, group or team - in which they will consistently (and with relative ease) achieve their common goals.

Those of us who manage groups of people want to get to predictable success for a simple reason: it's much easier to manage a group when you - and they - know how to be successful. Just like it's easier to manage a football team that already knows how to win, and just like it's easier to come down the back 9 on a Sunday afternoon at the Masters when you've already won 15 majors, any group that knows how to succeed has a substantial competitive advantage over those that don't.

Managing a group that is in any state other than predictable success is a trial of nerves: the group may or may not be successful (you can't tell with any certainty in advance), and even when it is successful, it's hard to tell why, or to 'capture' that success so that it can be repeated.

Does Your Car Move when You Step on the Gas Pedal?
The percentage of organizations that reach the stage of predictable success is small. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, said "When you put your foot on the gas in this company, the car goes forward". While that might sound like a vacuous truism, the reality is that the leaders of most organizations can't say any such thing. For them, when they step on the gas pedal, the car may or may not go forward. And if it does go forward, it may or may not go in the direction they expected or desired.

For many business leaders, even when they do succeed in getting the car to move forward for a time, they live with the constant, subconscious fear that the car might stop again at any time. Ever had that sinking feeling when you unexpectedly ran out of gas while barreling down the freeway? When, despite the fact that you've pushed the gas pedal to the floor, the car begins to decelerate and comes eventually to a shuddering stop?

For many owners and managers - for most of them, in fact - this is the reality they face: each day, experimentation, hope and determination meets the unknown and the unexpected, and hopefully, as a result, the car might go forward. And if doesn't go forward today, maybe it'll go forward tomorrow. Perhaps it will move in the right direction, and perhaps for more than a short period of time. Who knows?

Only leaders whose organizations are in predictable success can wake up every day and say "When I put my foot on the gas in this company, the car goes forward". This book shows you how to be such a leader: how to take your organization, business, division, department, project, group or team into predictable success, and how to keep it there.

So Why Isn't Everyone in Predictable Success?
If it is so much easier to run an organization when it is in predictable success, why do so few businesses, divisions, departments, projects, groups or teams ever get there? Why don't more of us who are business founders, owners, leaders and managers take the steps necessary to get the groups of people for which we are responsible into predictable success?

The reason is a bizarre, but simple one: Nobody ever told us such a thing existed. Most of us (and I assume as you are reading this that I can count you as one of 'us') were never told that success could be learned and replicated, understood and scaled, nurtured and sustained.

We were told about cash flow, human resources, people management, vendor selection, discount pricing, strategies and tactics, 5 'P's and 6 sigma's - and a thousand other nuggets of information. But we were never shown how all of it could (and should) add up to more than fleeting or momentary or seasonal success: how we could, if we took the right steps, develop a type of success that could be replicated over time and in any environment. Put simply: we were given the tools for success, and an expectation of success, but no dependable way of combining the two to consistently achieve success.

Because of this missing link - no dependable connection between the tools we have and the results we want - our experience in creating and sustaining success tends to be patchy: sometimes stuff works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the car goes forward, sometimes it doesn't. And this isn't an isolated experience - look at the titles on the shelves of the business section at your local bookstore next time you're browsing and you'll see how universal the experience of the elusiveness of business success is.

As a result, as business owners and managers we have developed a collective belief system that throbs along in the background while we work, telling us that business success will just 'happen' eventually, if we do the right things (whatever they are). This belief system persuades us that while success is there, it is out of reach, locked up in a vault, waiting for us to crack the code. If we put in enough work, if we spend each day trying different numbers on the lock, one day, if we're lucky or prescient, we'll guess right, the tumblers will fall, the safe door will swing open and success will be ours.

Here Are the Numbers
Part of that underlying belief system is true. There is a code that will unlock success, predictably and consistently, in any organization. The part that is untrue is that you have to guess at what that code is, or that you have to experiment every day to get it right. The code for predictable success is sitting in plain view, and is available to anyone who wants to pick it up and use it. It's contained in this book.

You don't need to experiment day in, day out, to find out how to make your organization predictably successful. Organizations have been in existence for long enough, and in enough numbers, that the patterns of organizational success and failure are as clear as the night sky, if you know where to look.

In this book, I'll show you were to look, what to look for, and how to interpret what you see.

The Structure of This Book
In this book, I've set out the path to predictable success for any organization in three parts: Part 1 contains the mechanical details - the step by step events that take an organization to predictable success; Part 2 discusses the dynamics - what's happening behind the scenes to cause (or hinder) predictable success; and in Part 3 I show how to combine the two - the mechanics and the dynamics to take the specific steps you need to take your organization to predictable success and keep it there.

To view it another way: in Part 1, I'll show you the 'what' of predictable success - what predictable success is, what the stages are that an organization goes through to get there, and what happens to an organization (or a business, division, department, project, group or team) once it arrives at predictable success. I'll also show you what will happen to an organization if it 'overshoots' predictable success.

In Part 2, you will discover the 'why' of predictable success - why is it that some organizations move easily through the various stages to get to predictable success while others get 'stuck' at some point in their development and need help to progress further. We'll examine why organizations that reach predictable success sometimes slip back out of it, and we'll see why some organizations never get there at all.

Finally, in Part 3 we'll look at the ''how' of predictable success. You will learn how to establish precisely where your organization (or business, division, department, project, group or team) are on the road to predictable success, how to get there, and once there, how to stay there.

Addendum: Recently it has become common to encourage readers of business books to 'dip in' to the text wherever they fancy - to cherry pick those parts that take their interest and leave the others. This is not such a book. You will be rewarded by working sequentially through the three sections in turn.