Hungry for What?

Three Points from Hunger in Paradise to Put on the Agenda at Your Next Leadership Meeting

Over 10 years ago, I co-authored the book Hunger in Paradise: Fighting Complacency, followed by the international edition Hunger in Paradise: How to Save Success from Failure.

As the main author and speaker, Rasmus Ankersen has presented the book's key points on some of the world's largest stages.

As a co-author and strategy developer, I have worked to create more hunger in larger Danish companies.

In this work, I have been met with great curiosity and enthusiasm but also some misunderstandings about the book's content.

For example, a CEO of a publicly listed company once asked me: "Is it the stick or the carrot that's needed?"

"Uh, what? Could you repeat that?" I mumbled before replying, "Neither."

Some business leaders might interpret complacency as having full, satisfied, and unengaged employees.

But a company's stagnation and decline are rarely due to poor effort from the employees.

Inefficiencies in production or a lack of hunger among salespeople can only move the needle a few percentage points either way.

Hunger in Paradise is written for business owners and leaders as a call to initiate significant development in their companies before they "suddenly" lose relevance and competitive advantages in changing markets.

Despite being over 10 years old, the book's points have not become any less relevant.

Several years of positive annual results still breed that dangerous form of conservatism and stagnation that exposes the company to great risk.

We still tend to believe or act as if future customer needs will remain as they are and that competitors will continue to be those we know right now. We do this despite societal and technological developments happening faster than ever before.

We attack with openness, innovation, and willingness to take risks when we create our initial success. But we go on the defensive with a defensive mindset when we need to exploit and defend our success, and we gradually lose it because we stagnate.

Extraordinary success slowly turns into a little less success, then into mediocre results, and eventually, in the worst case, into outright failure.

It feels like an unbreakable natural law when success turns into failure, but it's simply because we stop challenging, developing, and attacking everything that exists.

There is still good reason to work on creating more hunger in most companies' paradises, so here is an overview of what you and your leadership team might focus on based on the book's original fundamental concepts.

1. Never Trust Success

You should treat your company's success with the same degree of skepticism and self-examination as you would treat the company's decline.

Hunger on the agenda for your leadership meeting:

Hunger for feedback, criticism, and challenges.
Hunger to know the truth about the company's competitiveness, performance, and your leadership abilities.
Hunger for knowledge about new technology, trends, and the zeitgeist.
Hunger to understand what competitors and startups are doing well.
Hunger to try to measure/estimate whether you are heading toward new breakthroughs in the market and new growth in the business.

2. Burn Your Trophies

You need to find new benchmarks that can frame the company's performances as less successful, thereby combating the feeling of having reached the top.

Hunger on the agenda for your leadership meeting: