Welcome to the 74th edition of #theFutureReadyAdvisor Newsletter!
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The Coach Who Lost to Win
In the early years of his legendary coaching career at UCLA, John Wooden was obsessed with winning. Championships. Rankings. Victory. He studied his opponents relentlessly, designed elaborate game plans, and drove his players hard toward that singular goal: winning basketball games.
He lost more than he won.
Something fundamental was wrong, and Wooden knew it. The breakthrough came when he stopped asking “How do we win?” and started asking a different question: “What does it mean to be successful?”
His answer surprised everyone, including himself: “Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.”
Notice what’s missing from that definition: Winning. Trophies. Rankings. Championships.
Wooden made a radical shift. He stopped coaching his teams to beat opponents and started coaching them to maximize their own potential; to focus on controllable fundamentals like effort, preparation, and execution, rather than uncontrollable outcomes like scores and standings.
The results? UCLA won 10 NCAA championships in 12 years; a dynasty unmatched in college basketball history. The victories came, but they came as byproducts of pursuing something else entirely.
The Paradox of Pursuit
This pattern repeats across virtually every domain of high achievement, yet leaders consistently miss its significance. We set goals for revenue, market share, profitability, or growth; then wonder why achieving them feels hollow or why the achievement proves unsustainable.
The problem isn’t ambition. It’s the belief that success and fulfillment can be directly pursued and captured.
Philosopher John Stuart Mill articulated this paradox in his autobiography: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.” The same holds true for success, meaning, and virtually every desirable state we chase. Focus directly on the outcome, and it becomes elusive. Focus on the process, and the outcome arrives as a natural consequence.
Think about the hikers trapped on Mount Everest in October 2025. Many had traveled from across China during Golden Week, driven by the goal of experiencing Everest. They wanted the photo op, the achievement, the story to tell.
But the ones who survived the freak blizzard weren’t focused on reaching their destination; they were focused on the fundamentals that would keep them alive: staying warm, conserving energy, making sound real-time decisions, working together. The goal of experiencing Everest became secondary to the process of surviving it.
One hiker reflected afterwards: “We have to respect nature.” That respect meant letting go of the outcome they’d traveled for and focusing entirely on the process of getting down safely.
When Success Becomes a Trap
Research in positive psychology confirms this counterintuitive truth. Studies by Sonja Lyubomirsky at UC Riverside show that people who pursue happiness directly—through hedonistic pleasure-seeking or constant positive self-talk—tend to be less happy than those who pursue meaningful activities without explicit happiness as the goal. The hedonic treadmill ensures that achievement-based happiness is always temporary, always requiring the next accomplishment to maintain the high.
For leaders, this has profound implications. The advisory practice that focuses solely on asset growth often creates a culture of acquisition rather than service, leading to client churn that undermines the very growth being pursued. The corporation that optimizes purely for shareholder value often makes short-term decisions that erode long-term competitive position, destroying the value it sought to maximize.
WeWork’s spectacular rise and collapse illustrates what happens when leaders pursue growth as a direct goal rather than as a byproduct of creating genuine value.
Under Adam Neumann’s leadership, WeWork expanded aggressively from 2010 to 2019, reaching a peak private valuation of $47 billion. The goal was clear: grow fast, dominate markets, achieve unicorn status. Revenue exploded from $74 million in 2013 to $1.8 billion in 2018.
But the growth was hollow. WeWork was losing money on every lease it signed; its business model was fundamentally unprofitable at scale. The company was optimizing for the appearance of success (valuation, expansion, market presence) rather than the foundations that create sustainable success (unit economics, operational efficiency, customer value).
When WeWork filed for its IPO in August 2019, investors finally examined the fundamentals. Within months, the valuation collapsed from $47 billion to around $8 billion. Neumann was forced out. The company laid off thousands. What looked like spectacular success revealed itself as a spectacular mirage.
The failure wasn’t in the ambition to grow; it was in treating growth as the goal rather than as the natural outcome of creating value. WeWork pursued the byproduct while ignoring the process that would actually generate sustainable results. And we might be seeing this story play out yet again with the likes of OpenAI.
Contrast this with Amazon’s approach under Jeff Bezos. Amazon’s stated mission has always been customer obsession; making Amazon “Earth’s most customer-centric company.” Profitability, market dominance, and stock price were explicitly treated as outcomes that would follow from exceptional customer service, not as goals to be pursued directly.
This philosophy led to decisions that looked crazy to Wall Street: reinvesting profits into infrastructure, offering products below cost to improve customer experience, launching Amazon Prime at a time when the upfront costs seemed untenable. Bezos was willing to sacrifice short-term profitability for long-term customer value.
The results speak for themselves. Amazon became one of the world’s most valuable companies; but that value was a byproduct of obsessive focus on customer experience, not the direct goal.
The Advisory Practice Application
This distinction is critical for advisory practices, where the temptation to focus on assets under management (AUM), revenue, or client count as primary goals is intense.
I’ve worked with practices that were optimized entirely for asset gathering. Their marketing emphasized performance. Their client reviews focused on portfolio returns. Their value proposition was transactional: “We’ll beat the market and make you wealthy.”
These practices often hit a growth ceiling. Why? Because when clients are acquired through promises of superior returns, they leave when returns disappoint. The practice becomes a leaky bucket; constantly acquiring new assets to replace those walking out the door.
Now contrast this with practices built on a different foundation. These advisors focus on understanding clients deeply, aligning investment strategies with life goals, and providing genuine behavioral coaching during market volatility. Their value proposition isn’t transactional, it’s transformational: “We’ll help you achieve financial peace of mind.”
These practices tend to grow more steadily and sustainably. Client retention is higher. Referrals are more frequent. AUM grows—but as a byproduct of exceptional service, not as the direct goal.
The difference isn’t semantic. It fundamentally changes how you design client experiences, allocate resources, and measure success. When AUM is the goal, you optimize for closing deals. When client outcomes are the goal, you optimize for delivering value, and the AUM follows.
Three Shifts for Leaders
1. Reframe Your Success Metrics
Audit your current goals and KPIs. Which ones measure outcomes (revenue, market share, client count) versus inputs (client satisfaction, operational excellence, team development)? Shift your primary focus to input metrics. Track outcome metrics, but treat them as lagging indicators that confirm your input focus is working.
John Wooden didn’t measure his success by championships won; he measured it by whether his players gave maximum effort and improved continuously. The championships followed.
2. Build Process Discipline, Not Just Outcome Ambition
Wooden didn’t tell his players “We need to win the championship.” He told them “We need to execute these fundamentals with complete focus.” Identify the 3-5 processes that, if executed consistently with excellence, would naturally produce your desired outcomes. Then build organizational discipline around those processes.
The Everest hikers who survived weren’t thinking “I need to reach my destination.” They were thinking “I need to take this next step safely, keep my body warm, and make this immediate decision correctly.”
3. Create Meaning, Not Just Goals
Ask your team: “Why does our work matter beyond the revenue it generates?” Help people connect their daily efforts to something larger than financial metrics. Research shows that employees who find meaning in their work are more engaged, more productive, and more resilient during difficult periods; and those qualities ultimately drive better business outcomes.
The Long Game
The organizations that thrive long-term aren’t those with the most aggressive growth targets or the most sophisticated strategic plans. They’re the ones that understand John Wooden’s insight: that success is a byproduct of consistent excellence in the fundamentals that actually matter.
This doesn’t mean abandoning ambition or lowering standards. It means redirecting your focus from outcomes you can’t control to processes you can control. It means building organizations where success emerges naturally from the quality of work, the depth of relationships, and the consistency of execution.
The paradox is that this indirect approach to success often produces better results than direct pursuit—precisely because it focuses energy on the foundations that actually generate sustainable outcomes rather than on the outcomes themselves.
When that freak blizzard hit Everest in October 2025, the hikers who reached safety weren’t those most fixated on their original goals. They were those who could shift focus from destination to process, from outcome to fundamentals, from what they wanted to achieve to what they needed to do in each moment.
This principle—that the outcomes we desire most are byproducts of how we approach the journey—is a core theme in my latest book, The Uncertainty Edge: Lead with Clarity, Adapt with Confidence, Win with Conviction. The book explores how leaders can focus on controllable processes rather than uncontrollable outcomes, building organizations that thrive regardless of external conditions. It’s available now – just in time for Christmas stockings. https://mybook.to/theuncertaintyedge
One early reviewer of the book said:
Through over thirty years of building businesses across five continents, I have learned that success isn’t about controlling every variable; it is about skillfully navigating through the unknown and often uncharted paths. In “The Uncertainty Edge,” Dr. Sam Sivarajan combines real-world business crises with actionable frameworks that help leaders make confident decisions when the path forward isn’t clear. The book’s systematic approach to assessment, action, and adaptation mirrors what I’ve seen work in organizations I led during periods of radical change and market volatility. Dr. Daniel Monehin, DBA, MBA, FCPA, FCMA, CPA | Global Leadership Expert, and Amazon Bestselling Author of “The Pragmatic Optimist: Six Strategies for Leading During a Crisis”, Former EVP, Mastercard Inc.
The question for you: Are you pursuing the outcome directly, or are you building the foundation that makes the outcome inevitable?
The Future-Ready Advisor is Becoming The Uncertainty Edge
You’ve been reading this newsletter on LinkedIn for almost three years now. Every other week, I’ve shared insights on navigating complexity, making better decisions, and building resilient practices in an uncertain world.
Those insights aren’t going away. They’re evolving.
Starting in January, this newsletter becomes The Uncertainty Edge—and it’s moving to Substack.
The new name reflects what this has always been about: helping leaders navigate the tension between hesitation and haste, building the clarity and confidence to act decisively when outcomes are unpredictable.
Here’s what’s changing:
- New name: The Uncertainty Edge (aligned with my book and broader mission)
- New home: Substack (where you’ll get the full insights, tools, and frameworks)
- Deeper content: No character limits, complete breakdowns, exclusive templates
Here’s what’s NOT changing:
- Still free
- Still bi-weekly (every second Tuesday morning)
- Still 5-7 minutes (designed to be read with your coffee)
- Still practical (actionable frameworks you can use immediately)
I’ll continue sharing excerpts here on LinkedIn—an opening story, a key insight—but the complete frameworks, decision tools, and full analysis? That’s on Substack.
Next edition, I’ll share the Substack link and give you a preview of the first edition of The Uncertainty Edge dropping in early January.
Until then, remember: the outcomes you want most come as byproducts of the processes you commit to every day.
When you are ready, direct message me and I can help you with
- Speaking Engagements & Workshops designed for your team and clients
- Tailored, high-impact Consulting and Coaching Services for your practice
Check out my podcast and other resources at www.samsivarajan.com
