Predictable Success

How can an organization grow and thrive without losing its spark or collapsing under its own weight? In Predictable Success, Les McKeown argues that every organization progresses through an identifiable lifecycle of growth, struggle, stability, and decline. The key, he insists, is reaching—and staying in—a unique phase he calls Predictable Success—a state where a company can effortlessly set and achieve its goals consistently. McKeown’s claim is simple but profound: sustainable success isn’t accidental, nor is it reserved for visionary geniuses. It’s the result of understanding and managing your organization’s natural lifecycle.

McKeown discovered these patterns after decades of launching and consulting for over 400 businesses around the world. He defines seven predictable stages of organizational growth—from the chaotic birth of a start-up to the sterile end of decline—and argues that every company can locate itself on this map. The goal isn’t perfection but awareness and balance: knowing what stage you’re in, anticipating what’s coming next, and deliberately steering toward Predictable Success rather than stumbling into dysfunction.

The Map of Organizational Life

McKeown’s model unfolds like a narrative of creation and decay. It begins with early chaos and ends with institutional rigidity. Each stage requires different leadership skills and introduces new opportunities and threats:

• Early Struggle – where survival is the sole objective. The company fights to find a viable market before its cash or stamina runs out.
• Fun – that exhilarating, entrepreneurial surge when everything clicks and growth comes fast. It’s flexible, customer-focused, and wildly unpredictable.
• Whitewater – where success starts breeding complexity. Systems lag behind sales, things break, and internal conflicts erupt. The founder’s intuitive management style no longer suffices.
• Predictable Success – the sweet spot. The company achieves balance between entrepreneurial freedom and disciplined control. It can make decisions easily, implement them effectively, and grow sustainably.
• Treadmill – when systems dominate people. Bureaucracy replaces innovation, and caution kills agility.
• The Big Rut – complacency sets in; the organization serves itself, not its customers. Creativity is gone.
• Death Rattle – the endgame. Resources dry up, markets move on, and the organization collapses or is sold off.

Like a human life, each stage feels inevitable, but McKeown stresses that decline is never destiny. You can deliberately move forward or backward in the cycle by changing how you make decisions, design systems, and empower people.

Why Predictable Success Matters

For McKeown, Predictable Success represents an organization’s “prime” —a dynamic equilibrium where entrepreneurship and systems exist in tension but harmony. Companies like GE under Jack Welch, or Ford under Alan Mulally, managed to operate in this zone for years: disciplined enough to execute reliably, yet innovative enough to evolve ahead of competitors. In this state, the “car moves forward when you hit the gas.” Decision-making flows smoothly, teams take ownership, and leadership becomes about steering rather than pushing.

The challenge, however, is that most firms either never reach this level or can’t sustain it. They get stuck firefighting in Whitewater or over-correct and smother creativity in Treadmill. McKeown offers a roadmap for making the climb deliberately—and a toolkit for leaders who wish to regain their company’s spark after overshooting into bureaucracy.

How the Journey Unfolds

Throughout the book, McKeown uses vivid case studies: Robyn’s design agency paralyzed by growth pains in Whitewater, Derek’s PR firm suffocating under corporate control in Treadmill, and Phil’s snack brand reborn into Predictable Success through disciplined teamwork. His narrative structure—naming each stage after a physical experience (Fun, Whitewater, Treadmill)—makes complex organizational theory feel immediate and human. He blends consulting wisdom with storytelling, showing leaders how to diagnose their stage and what specific actions to take next.

The first half (“Taking the Journey”) shows how organizations rise—through experimentation, chaos, and painful learning—to reach Predictable Success. The second half (“Arrival”) describes how to achieve that balance and sustain it, or return to it if lost. Together, they form a playbook for sustainable growth, applicable not just to enterprises but to nonprofits, teams, and even personal ventures.

The Larger Implication: Controlled Evolution

McKeown’s underlying message echoes systems thinkers like Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline): success is a living process, not a fixed point. As an organization grows, it must evolve its structure, leadership, and mindset to match its increased complexity. Refusing to change—whether by clinging to the chaos of Fun or the security of process in Treadmill—invites collapse. Managers must act as architects, not autopilots, deliberately shaping how decisions, communication, and accountability flow.

Predictable Success offers that architecture. It reassures you that the challenges you face—conflicts, chaos, overcontrol—aren’t random failures but natural growing pains. And more importantly, it shows that by mastering each stage rather than resisting it, you can build an organization that not only grows but keeps its vitality for decades to come.

Every organization begins with a fight for survival. McKeown calls this first stage Early Struggle—a brief, brutal sprint to find a viable market before your time or money runs out. It’s the entrepreneurial equivalent of a rocket launch: you need massive energy just to lift off. Without enough fuel or a clear destination, gravity wins.

Drawing on his own failed and successful ventures—including a Pizza Hut franchise in Ireland that narrowly avoided collapse—McKeown illustrates how even simple ideas face immense drag. Founders must continually ask two questions: Is there a real market? and Do we have the cash to reach it? Nothing else matters at this point. Hiring, branding, even vision statements are distractions until revenue exceeds expenses.

Tripling the Fuel Supply

McKeown’s rule of thumb is deceptively blunt: whatever capital you think you need, triple it. Start-ups fail less from bad ideas than from underestimating how long it takes to achieve viability. He contrasts disciplined entrepreneurs who bootstrap strategically with “Early Struggle Obsessives”—founders addicted to the adrenaline of perpetual crisis. The former focus on customers; the latter chase the feeling of launching.

To escape Early Struggle, McKeown offers a short checklist: prioritize customer feedback, listen instead of broadcasting, experiment rapidly, and adapt mercilessly. Every day should end with the question: “What did we do today to move closer to a sustainable market?” If you survive this Darwinian phase, you’ve earned the right to enter the next one—Fun.

“It doesn’t have to be pretty,” McKeown writes. “It just has to work. Up or out—those are the only options in Early Struggle.”

After barely surviving Early Struggle, growth finally feels easy—and it’s fun. This second stage is the entrepreneur’s honeymoon: sales soar, everyone wears multiple hats, and customers love the flexibility. The culture is fast, informal, and personality-driven. The founder is both hub and hero, and success stories quickly become internal legend.

The Rise of the Big Dogs

In Fun, McKeown describes how high-performing salespeople become “Big Dogs”—the rainmakers who built sweat equity by fueling the company’s momentum. Everything revolves around sales. Operations, finance, and administration orbit the “sun” of revenue. This structure, which he calls the Sun and Moons model, keeps the organization simple and responsive—but also dangerously fragile.

Stories from leaders like McKeown’s own consultancy show how intoxicating this phase can be. Teams work 80-hour weeks, decisions happen instantly, and clients become friends. Yet beneath the energy lies a potential downfall: unchecked growth and hubris. Entrepreneurs often mistake momentum for mastery, adding offices or products faster than they can handle.

When Fun Turns to Dangerous Overconfidence

McKeown warns that Fun creates blind spots. Costs spiral. Founders take on too much debt, pursue every opportunity, or ignore basic systems because “we’re different.” He tells of companies expanding overseas or acquiring big clients only to discover they’ve outpaced their capacity. Eventually, complexity catches up, and the company hits what he calls Whitewater—the turbulence that ends the simplicity of Fun.

Still, McKeown doesn’t dismiss this stage. Fun businesses are vibrant, creative, and inspiring to work in. The trick is to enjoy it without being blinded by it—recognizing that the party must eventually evolve into something more disciplined if growth is to last.

Whitewater marks the transition from exuberant growth to operational reality. McKeown describes this third stage as the moment when a company’s own success trips it up. Complexity explodes. Mistakes multiply. Sales and operations turn against each other. The founder feels trapped between maintaining creativity and imposing control.

The Heart and Kidney Problem

To fix the chaos, leaders often restructure into what McKeown calls the “Heart and Kidney” model—splitting sales (“the heart”) from operations (“the kidney”). Unfortunately, this creates a no man’s land between them, fueling destructive turf wars. Robyn’s design agency, once joyful and agile, is torn apart by fights between her creative and operational leads. The founder’s frustration peaks; she longs for the old Fun days.

The Catcher's Mitt Solution

The only way out, McKeown argues, is adopting the “Catcher’s Mitt” structure—where systems link sales and operations seamlessly. Problems can no longer “fall through the cracks.” This also requires a psychological shift: from ad hoc improvisation to predictable execution. The organization’s focus moves from revenue to profitability, and management learns to view systems as allies rather than enemies.

The price is emotional: turnover spikes as employees used to freedom rebel against new rules. For founders, this is a defining test. Some retreat to Fun, preferring chaos to conformity. Others push through the discomfort, building the muscle needed for the next stage—Predictable Success itself.

“Whitewater isn’t a failure,” McKeown writes. “It’s simply what growth feels like when you outgrow improvisation.”

Reaching Predictable Success is like an athlete entering peak form—a state of flow. The organization can now combine creativity with discipline, entrepreneurship with systems, and vision with execution. McKeown calls this “an exquisite tension” between two forces: the innovators who drive risk and the process builders who deliver reliability.

The Five Hallmarks of Predictable Success

• Effective decision making – Data and debate replace intuition. Managers act decisively but collaboratively.
• Goal alignment – Plans translate seamlessly into action; teams hit goals predictably.
• Balanced structure – People, process, and systems reinforce—not fight—each other.
• Self-accountability – Employees take initiative without constant supervision.
• Ownership – The shift from “push” to “pull”: individuals drive performance because they care.

Ian, the door manufacturer McKeown describes, embodies this stage. Once swamped by inefficiency, he built lean manufacturing systems while preserving creativity. His company regained profitability and pride—doors now produced with robotic precision symbolized the harmony of art and structure.

Staying in Balance

Yet Predictable Success is fragile. Drift too far toward process, and you slide into Treadmill; lose discipline, and you fall back into Whitewater. Maintaining balance requires what McKeown likens to steering a sailboat—constant micro-adjustments to changing winds. Companies that sustain this balance, like GE under Immelt or Ford under Mulally, institutionalize their ability to succeed: they develop an organizational “muscle memory” of success that outlasts any leader.

Predictable Success is therefore not an endpoint but a discipline—a way of operating where stability and innovation fuel each other instead of competing. As McKeown puts it, it’s “learning how to be like water—adaptable, fluid, and endlessly renewable.”

Once organizations master systems, they often fall in love with them. Treadmill begins when process becomes a religion. McKeown illustrates this through Derek, a PR agency founder whose creative firm flourished under corporate acquisition—until new owners imposed rigid procedures. Soon his team stopped innovating; morale collapsed. Derek, once passionate, quit, realizing his company had become lifeless.

The Symptoms of Treadmill

In this stage, form replaces function. Compliance beats results. Risk-taking, once celebrated, becomes punished behavior. Decision-making slows, innovation stalls, and the organization begins to lose the “Wow” factor. Veteran employees feel suffocated, while newcomers—comfortable with bureaucracy—fit right in. It’s a silent sickness because everything still looks efficient from the outside.

Recovering from Overmanagement

Treadmill isn’t terminal—but it’s dangerous. McKeown prescribes eight preventive actions: appoint outside truth-tellers on your board, give senior executives external coaches, hold biannual “advances” focused solely on external trends, encourage mentoring across departments, and enforce MBWA (“Management By Walking Around”). These human contact systems counteract process addiction.

If ignored, Treadmill hardens into The Big Rut, where bureaucracy becomes identity. Companies in that stage no longer serve customers—they serve their own processes. McKeown’s portrait of an aging candy manufacturer captures this eerie decline: leaders boast “We’ve been doing it this way since 1908,” blind to irrelevance. The final act, Death Rattle, arrives when the market or cash runs out, and the brand is sold for scraps.

“Every system that once set you free,” McKeown warns, “eventually tries to own you.” The antidote? Institutionalize curiosity, empathy, and courage before the bureaucracy cures you of them.

Reaching Predictable Success is hard; staying there is harder. In the closing chapters, McKeown teaches leaders how to institutionalize innovation and risk-taking without losing control. It’s a balancing act between two complementary systems: mechanical (structures and processes) and human (people development, creativity, ownership).

Balancing Systems and People

Leaders must nurture a healthy tension between order and agility. They must maintain tight core systems—clear roles, solid decision-making, structured meetings—while simultaneously investing in people-oriented levers: flexible hiring, developmental training, mentoring, job swaps, and sabbaticals. This rejuvenating interplay keeps organizations from drifting into Treadmill.

Institutionalizing Innovation and Risk

McKeown proposes linking risk-taking to the organization's mission and mentoring frameworks, and tying innovation to empowerment and training. In other words, don’t outsource creativity—embed it in everyone’s daily role. When employees feel safe to experiment and are guided by clear boundaries, innovation becomes consistent rather than accidental.

This culture of ownership and self-accountability is the lynchpin of Predictable Success. In such an environment, leadership isn’t about supervision but stewardship—modeling curiosity, coaching truth, and trusting teams to act like owners. Companies that internalize these habits can sustain Predictable Success for decades, adapting to market shifts without losing their soul.

Ultimately, McKeown’s message resists the myth of permanent stability. Organizations, like living organisms, breathe in complexity and breathe out adaptation. Predictable Success is not an equilibrium to be frozen but a rhythm to be maintained—forever balancing process with purpose, daring with discipline.