When the Formula for Success Is No Longer Enough
Case Illustration
All names and identifying details in these case illustrations are fictional. They are composite sketches drawn from clinical and coaching experience, not accounts of real individuals.
The formula that always worked.
Jonah was both elated and unsurprised when he was promoted to Partner at Gateway Capital. His five years at the firm had been marked by success and favor by senior partners — excellent due diligence, rigorous financial modeling, thorough research. Aside from his performance, he was friendly and polite to all, well-spoken, and presented a picture of wholesomeness and professionalism. Things had always worked out for Jonah. He had good reason to expect they would continue to.
Yet here he was, spending another late evening in the office, up to his proverbial ears in digital paperwork, snacking from the canteen to ward off hunger. A senior partner had handed him a promising lead — a company developing grid-scale battery storage facilities, a new area for Jonah, and one he was determined to master completely before presenting to the investment committee. He would leave nothing to chance. He never did.
At the end of that week, Jonah walked away, drink in hand, from the garden party he and his wife were hosting. Alone in his office, he realized he was really unhappy. First, while he was normally diligent in his fitness routine, for the past few weeks he had been so swamped by work and pressure he had barely exercised. Combined with poor diet and a sleep schedule mysteriously and unfortunately also thrown out of whack, he realized he just felt awful. But it wasn’t only the physical depletion. Something about the reception to his investment committee presentation was unsatisfied and puzzling. He had produced a flawless deck full of information and forecasts — his usual excellent analysis. Rather than this triumph of overtime being appreciated, the conversation had turned almost immediately to externals he hadn’t prepared for: regulatory risk, political winds, the municipal environment where the company planned to operate.
Accustomed to having a prepared answer to every possible question, Jonah could neither remember nor forget how he dealt with the questions lobbed at him. He deflected to his deck when he could. He admitted, more times than he could bear to remember, that he didn’t know. The worst moment came when somebody asked Jonah point blank if he thought Gateway should invest or not. No, actually, the worse moment was when the senior partner asked him what the CEO of the target company had said about these issues, and Jonah said he had not yet met with him. Nothing in Jonah’s life or career had prepared him for the mortifying silence that followed.
On Success as Its Own Answer — Until the Question Changes
Jonah was a man privileged with success. His genuine good nature and strong work ethic, combined with his intelligence and penchant for thoroughness, had more or less guaranteed it. What he hadn’t noticed — hadn’t needed to notice — was that he had become addicted to the habit of success, and more specifically to the formula for success. And that formula depended, more than he knew, on pleasing others and following the rules.
The formula had always worked because the rules had always been legible. Jonah knew how to excel in a world of knowable facts, clear deliverables, and measurable outcomes. His penchant for facts and detail, the need to be thorough, to be in control of facts and eschew fuzzy realities — these were genuine strengths in the right context. The problem was that the job had changed. The target had become ambiguous. Success now required risk and judgment made not despite uncertainty but because of it — and Jonah had no formula for that.
Being so successful worked against Jonah developing an interest in introspection. What need for it, when everything is going well? And when suddenly it does not, it can involve a full bodily upheaval. In a crisis Jonah is so busy coping by doubling down on what he knows how to do well, that he has little precedent of somatic or psychological curiosity.
The sleeplessness, the poor diet, the abandoned fitness routine — these weren’t incidental. They were the body registering what the mind hadn’t yet processed. The signals were there. He just had no practice in reading them.
Self-understanding had not been a priority for Jonah, because he hadn’t needed it before to be happy. Success, for a certain kind of capable and well-intentioned person, is its own answer to every question. Until the question changes.
See also: Loneliness at the Top — the cluster article that frames this territory.
See also: Career Transitions — on what happens when the familiar ground shifts.
See also: When a Life Change Forces the Question — on the deeper currents a disruption can surface.