Success Can Be Misleading: Why We Need to Ask Better Questions

Early in my career, an annual awards ceremony taught me an unexpected lesson about measuring success. Every year, one of our regional teams would take the stage at the national sales meeting, tears of joy in their eyes, celebrating their spectacular results. To be clear, the results were impressive — terrific numbers, terrific people. Here’s where they worked: Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas. Hmmm … the American Southwest in the 1980s.

I admired their success, so I wanted to dig deeper to see what I could learn from their wins. When I examined the headwinds and tailwinds each team faced, I noticed macro factors at play. In these high-growth markets, it was undeniable that boom town bulges contributed to record-setting results. Adjust for the demographic trendlines, and the performance was pretty on par with other sales regions. To be clear — their success is still remarkable. It takes skill to fully capitalize on favorable conditions. It just wasn’t skill alone that had un-leveled the playing field.

This lesson has stayed with me through decades of leadership. As a leader — at any level, particularly CEO — you owe it to your organization to ask questions, even when things appear to be going well.

Later, I learned this lesson once again at Ready Pac Foods, this time the hard way. At Ready Pac, the key product then and now was pre-packaged salad. Early in my tenure, we implemented what seemed like a brilliant strategy for lettuce purchasing. The first year’s results were spectacular, and we congratulated ourselves on our innovation and insight. Then, the next year, the weather in the purchasing region wasn’t spectacular at all. It wasn’t terrible. It was just average, with typical swings of heat and cold, rain and sun. Our lettuce numbers wilted. P&L suffered. Oh, so that’s why traditional hedging strategies exist.

These experiences taught me three fundamental principles about questioning success:

First, context is key. Are you winning because of a truly great strategy or favorable conditions? What’s actually behind those numbers? Leaders need to know what’s working and why, across vastly different markets and conditions.

Second, there’s no substitute for really understanding how things work. You can’t ask good questions if you don’t understand the technical details. At Frito-Lay, I discovered this from taking over a production unit with historically poor output numbers. Success came only after I understood every technical detail — from visible waste to the fraction-of-a-gram differences in bag fills — that separated winning from losing.

Third, and most importantly, you need to connect technical knowledge with PEOPLE. You can’t build a culture of excellence without this combination of technical competence and people focus. The best leaders lead with questions, not answers. This principle perfectly captures the connection between technical knowledge and people development.

These principles matter more than ever in today’s complex business environment. CEOs face an overwhelming flow of data and metrics, all while navigating increased stakeholder demands and public scrutiny. It’s tempting to celebrate the wins without close examination because, hey, we’re all pressed for time. But real leadership means going deeper and taking the time.

I experience this reality at SpartanNash every day. When a team reports great results, we celebrate — and ask questions. What drove this success? What can we learn? How can we make it repeatable? These conversations, grounded in both technical understanding and respect for our People First culture, help us build the high-performance teams we need to keep growing.

Looking ahead, I believe the most successful organizations will be those that combine rigorous analysis with genuine respect for the people making the magic happen. The real work of leadership isn’t managing figures on a spreadsheet. It’s understanding how things truly work and using that knowledge to help people grow.

The next time you see impressive results, take the time to reflect even as you’re celebrating and especially after. Ask the second question. And keep asking. Commit yourself to an ongoing quest for understanding. You and your organization will be stronger for it.

And if, like me, you happen to be a bit of a nerd about math and the details? Well, each of us have our own superpowers.