Death by Success II

There is another, much more frequent "Death by Success" cause, first introduced to me by Jerry Weinberg and Wayne Strider and Elaine Cline (Strider and Cline).

It's the same process that some herbicides use: unconstrained growth.
Monsanto's flagship herbicide Round Up is exactly this sort of agent.

If you are very good at what you do and much sought after, this can lead directly to massive Failure - personally and in business.

Growth is Good, but too much, too fast is a Killer.

The only protection is awareness.
As  Virginia Satir pointed out, "We can't see inside other people's heads, nor can we see ourselves as others see us" (courtesy again of Jerry and "Strider and Cline".)

Typically you need objective, external help is recognising this condition.
Once you have restored Situational Awareness, you can choose your response. Which may be "I'm outa here", Denial or something in between.

There is an alternative form of "Death by Success", which again we see in the Plant Kingdom.

Your initial approach, solution or technique may not Scale-Up or have a fixed Upper-Bound.
E.g. if you sell "factory seconds", there is a limited supply that sets your maximum turnover.
Or selling fragments of the Berlin Wall - at some point the Genuine Article is all gone...

The example in the Plant Kingdom are when tree seedlings 'set' in unsuitable places, like a small pot or within a bottle. Down the road, they will become "root bound", which slows growth, then they'll consume all the nutrients and having converted 'everything' into plant material, die.

That's it for that plant - all of one resource has been exhausted and it's Game Over.