Understanding Patterns: Success to the Successful

Do you ever wonder why some things that you do succeed brilliantly, while other things fall short of your dreams? The 'success to the successful' pattern may have something to do with that. This pattern shows us that more resources tend to be given to those things which have succeeded, causing them to continue succeeding.  The counter-part is that resources tend to be withdrawn from those things that started out as less than a success, pretty much guaranteeing that they will never be a success.  

The Daniel Mosaic provides an interesting real-life example of the success to the successful pattern.  My blog posts have ranged between about five and 30 page views in the first week after posting.  Some of them continue to receive additional page views in the subsequent weeks. But now, after nine months, two early blogs have pulled way ahead of the rest in page views.  They have new page views every week, while other blogs receive none. It may have been that they were my best blogs, but I think that it has more to do with the success to the successful pattern.  Because they are my most read blogs, new visitors to the site tend to read those blogs, ensuring that they will remain my most read blogs. I have seen the same behaviour in myself when I am choosing YouTube or Ted Talks videos. 

So the question is, how else could this pattern be affecting you without you realizing it?

1) Relationships: The people you are most comfortable with, you will be most open with and these relationships will continue to grow. The people you have a hard time with, you will invest less of yourself in and these relationships will remain the same or you will drift farther apart.  

2) Personal growth: I am excellent at researching some things and tend to make good choices - like purchasing the best quality flat screen TV for the best possible price. I continue to get better in choices like this as I devote more time and creativity and reap the rewards. But it is a different story in other areas where I have felt criticized and therefore procrastinate looking into potential solutions. As a result, my actions fall short and next time I procrastinate more which ensures that I will not grow in the area. 

3) Team leadership: If you have team or family members that differ in their abilities or productivity, have you considered how much you might be contributing to this? Do you spend more time coaching the ones who are easier to teach or catch on faster? Do you compliment them more? Are you more open to their ideas? Of course people do have differences in attitude and ability, but the success to the successful pattern may also be at work. 

The answer to the success to the successful pattern is to look at your allocation of resources. You may need to take some resources away from something that is growing well to invest in an important area that is struggling. 

If some of you are wondering what my most popular blogs were, I am not going to tell you. That would just be drawing more attention to them. Instead, I would like to draw your attention to two blogs that I think are worth reading that never received much attention when they were first posted.  

Perspective
Polarity Thinking

You may need to do the same in an undeveloped area that you would like to grow...

Note: the 'shifting the burden' pattern is one of eight common systems archetypes in systems thinking.