What to Do After a Big Win or a Bad Loss

Sep 27

6 min read

Updated: Oct 29

There is an interesting problem that comes with success. The more you build, the more there is to lose. A business, a team, a reputation, years of evidence that you are good at this. Then something doesn't work. A major customer leaves. Revenue drops. A great person walks out. You make a decision you wish you could take back. Failure feels different when you have already been successful, because now a result can become a verdict. Winning does the same thing from the other side. You reach the number, and the moment feels like an ending. What came out of the Dynasty DNA research is that both outcomes ask the same move of you. Focus again. You won, what's next. You failed, what's next. Getting excellent at what happens next is the work, and it is available after any result.

From Edge of the Napkin, Episode 398 of Paper Napkin Wisdom.

When a Result Becomes a Verdict

When you are starting out, failure almost comes with the territory. You try something, you change it, you try again. There is not much history to defend.

Then you become successful. You get used to evidence. Evidence that you are good at this, evidence that your decisions work, evidence that people believe in you. That is a powerful thing. I also wonder if it can become a little dangerous. Because once you have accumulated enough evidence that you are successful, you have something else. You have something to protect.

Now a failure can feel like an interruption, or worse. It can feel like proof that something fundamental has changed.

You lose a major customer. Maybe we're slipping.
Revenue drops. Maybe the business isn't as good as we thought.
A great person leaves. Maybe our culture isn't as strong as we believed.
You make a decision that turns out to be wrong. Maybe I'm not as good at this as I thought.

Something failed. That may be completely true. The meaning you attach to it is a separate matter, and once a result becomes a verdict you are doing something very different from learning. You are defending.

Why Studying Dynasties Meant Studying Losing

I started this research because I wanted to understand sustained winning. Fifteen dynasty franchises, four major professional sports leagues, thirty years. Teams that found a way to win repeatedly.

The deeper I got into it, the more obvious something became. You can't study sustained winning unless you're also willing to study losing.

Every dynasty loses. Every single one. They lose games and seasons. Players leave, coaches change, mistakes get made, injuries happen. Sometimes a team gets embarrassed, run right out of the building. What separates them is not the ability to eliminate those moments. It's what happens after they hit the ground, and maybe even how they hit the ground.

The Panthers used a loss as information

In 2023 the Florida Panthers made an incredible run to the Stanley Cup Final and lost. Vegas won the cup. Florida went home.

Think about what that moment could have become. They had gotten close enough to touch it. Someone else lifted the cup and took it away. There are lots of stories available from there. We blew our chance. We weren't ready. We need more talent. We need to change everything. Or we should protect everything, because it almost worked.

Florida had another option. They used the result as information and ran the loop again. Focus, align, act, then focus again. They came back in 2024 and won the Stanley Cup. In 2025 they won it again.

The Loop Runs After Everything, Including the Trophy

That sounds like the ending. Except dynasties don't really get endings.

Before the following season had properly started, Aleksander Barkov tore his ACL and MCL in training camp. Now the problem is completely different. You can respond to losing a championship by preparing differently or changing the team. You can't outwork an ACL. The captain is gone.

So the challenge changed. What did all that winning actually build? Had the culture become something larger than one person? What lives in everybody else? The book follows that Panthers arc from the 2023 loss through the championships and into Barkov's absence, because it's one of the most complete examples of the loop in the entire study.

Arrival or confirmation

Winning creates its own problem. When you have spent years trying to reach the top of the mountain, getting there feels like an ending. You did the thing you were chasing, and it happened.

Dynasty DNA makes a distinction there. A champion can experience winning as arrival. We made it, we're here, the story is complete. A dynasty leader can experience the same win as confirmation. It worked. Focus mattered. Align mattered. The act mattered.

If the win is confirmation, celebrate it. You should celebrate it. Appreciate the people who made it possible. Then ask again, what's next.

The Identity Trap, and Why Protecting Isn't Building

This gets particularly hard when you've built something worth protecting. Maybe you're leading a company that's been around twenty years. You finally built the team you wanted. You hit a number that once seemed impossible. Employees depend on what you've created, and so does your family. There is more at stake now, so the temptation is understandable. Protect it. Hold on to it. Don't screw it up.

But protection and building aren't the same thing.

The book calls one expression of this the identity trap. An organization starts winning and starts protecting the identity of being a champion. The stories point backward, and so do the decisions. People who got you there become untouchable because they got you there. The win stops being evidence and becomes identity. Now the organization isn't building, it's guarding.

Businesses do exactly this. You have your best year ever, so you try to repeat it. You keep the same structure, the same products, the same people in the same roles, because they produced that result. Meanwhile customers change, competitors change, your people change, and you change. Yesterday's Focus may have been exactly right for yesterday. That doesn't automatically make it right for tomorrow.

So failure can stop you because it hurts. Winning can stop you because it feels so good. Failure can make you question who you are. Winning can convince you that who you are today is enough for tomorrow. Failure can make you afraid to move. Winning can make you afraid to change. Different outcomes, same danger. You stop looping.

What's Left When Something Breaks

The Kansas City Chiefs are another example in the book. Their extraordinary run eventually ended. For the first time in the Patrick Mahomes era they missed the playoffs, and Mahomes was injured in the game that eliminated them. That's a fall, and a big one.

It creates a fascinating test, because magnetism was never supposed to prevent falling. Nothing does. The interesting thing is what you have left to rebuild with afterward.

That's a very different way to measure what you've built. Maybe your culture isn't best measured during your best quarter, or your leadership when everybody agrees with you. A business doesn't reveal much when demand is easy. Look at what remains when something breaks. That's where you see what has accumulated underneath: credibility, trust, consistency, meaning, influence.

These last three Edge of the Napkin conversations are really one conversation. Identity first, traits follow. Those traits create deposits in other people, and sustained deposits create sustained influence. Then life tests the influence, sometimes with success, sometimes with failure. Then you run the loop again.

A Move You Can Make This Week

Pick one result you're carrying right now. It can be a win or a failure. Something you're incredibly proud of, or something you wish had gone completely differently.

Look at it. Appreciate what happened for you. Notice what it gave you and what it taught you. Then be careful about what you make it mean about who you are. Because the win isn't your identity. The failure isn't either. They're evidence. They're information.

Then ask one thing. What's my next Focus? The last one is behind you. Where does your attention belong now?

How the loop runs inside a business

Focus. Decide what matters now and where you're going.
Align. Get honest about where you actually are relative to that.
Act. Commit and move.

You have your best year ever. Great. What did you learn? What has changed? The business needed something then. Does it need that same thing now? Where is the next Focus?

You have your worst year in a decade. Okay. What did you learn? What has changed? And where is the next Focus?

The outcome changes. The leadership move doesn't. Not even a little.

Because championships are moments, and dynasties are built between them. Winning isn't the end, it's the next Focus. Failing isn't the end, it's the next Focus. There is no end. Get excellent at what's next.

Related Insights

If you want to know what your organization would have left to rebuild with when something breaks, the Subtraction Test is a useful place to look. The Subtraction Test

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This conversation is part of the Limiting Beliefs Growth Hub. See every Growth Hub.