What do these companies have in common? Sears, Blackberry, and Zynga. If your answer was that they are all on life support and are not likely to survive, you win. But why are they failing, and what did they all do in common that lead them down to the cliff’s edge?

Let’s start with Sears. What do you know about the history of the company? Did you know that it started out as a mail order catalog as early as 1894? Sears was the Amazon of its time, and yet it seems to be barely able to survive. When the dot-com boom happened where was Sears? The had a history of mail order, and yet they have not even come close to being competitive. I would put forward that Blackberry and Zynga are in the same boat for almost exactly the same reason!.

Lets switch gears slightly and talk about the company that many people either love to hate or hate to love or fall somewhere inbetween. Yes, I’m talking about Apple. What position was Apple in about 20 years ago that was similar in nature to the above three companies? Yep, Apple seemed to be failing. In fact Michael Dell famous stated: “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders…”. To be honest he said this because he couldn’t imagine himself as CEO.

In all of these cases the companies in question were stuck in the past. They were dwelling on their past successful formulae and were blinded by the future that was coming at them like a runaway train.

In each case they had a form of tunnel vision that blinded them to what was going on around them. In Apple’s case, Steve Jobs came in and killed multiple product lines, and reinvented the company in a way that still boggles my mind. None of the others have been able to.

Ok, so I want to point out that this fixation on the past is real, and it doesn’t just affect companies. It affects all of us, even I. Maintaining an objective point of view is difficult, especially when it may clash or contradict a past successful viewpoint. Look around you at the politicians for example and ask yourself: “Are they selling the past, or looking forward to the future?”

In my profession, I’ve learned to always allow someone the opportunity to tell me I’m wrong about an approach to solving a problem. Sometimes I do get stuck only thinking about solving problems one way, and having someone show me a better solution helps make me realign myself to avoid allowing the past to dictate my future.

Dwell in the past, and be doomed to eventually fail. Learn from the past, but always look to the future.