The most irritating thing about working with the best companies — the champions of business — is the false sense of security they place in being number one. They assume because they’re the best today, they will be tomorrow. But we know that’s just not true.

A quarter of the companies that Jim Collins uses as references in “Good to Great”, have since been sold, shuttered, or indicted. They fell from the grace of being number one. For additional evidence that being number one doesn’t guarantee tomorrow’s success, just add to that list the examples of corporate slippage: Kodak, Blackberry and Nokia.

And the other companies that were once industry leaders that don’t exist at all today: Compaq, PanAm, TWA, EF Hutton, Woolworths, Standard Oil … if I continue with the list, this article will merely be a list of past market leaders who are gone today.

Could Emirates Airline slip from being the world’s #1 airline to become #2? Could Emaar Properties, Jumeirah, Majid Al Futtaim, DP World lose their lustre? While I hope that none of them ever slip from the top, let’s be reasonable it’s possible for any business or leader to decline, even for you.

This makes me wonder, “Why does #1 ever become #2 or worse?”

It’s tempting when you’re number one to read your press clippings and to drink the proverbial Kool-Aid. While it’s important to celebrate success, it can be equally debilitating and give you a false sense of security. Being number one is temporal.

Number ones often exude a sense of arrogance believing that everything they do is the best way: their products, services, practices and processes are better than anyone else in the industry. While that may have been true for yesterday and possibly even today, the focus must be on the future.

Somebody is thinking about the future of your industry differently than you are.

In the late 1980s and early 90s, 80 per cent of record-making equipment was scrapped because the vinyl record industry didn’t believe in the emergence of CD technology and understand how it would shape the future of the music industry. The CD was planned to be the successor of the vinyl record for playing music.

Yet, industry leaders shrugged their shoulders and put it down, claiming it would never amount to anything.

Columbia House, the leader in mail-order music clubs, who cannibalised the CD revolution also didn’t see what was coming. They’re now bankrupt, thanks to iTunes. In a mere 20 years, the music industry passed through three significant consumer platforms (and made me waste a lot of money responding to each change).

What infuriates me is that in each of the music industry transformations, the future ideas were greeted with scepticism by the current industry leader. I’m sure if I had been in a room with executives of the vinyl record industry or Columbia House, I would’ve heard, “But we’re doing that.”

Thinking that they were doing what iTunes was doing. While you know they weren’t, success can be a blindfold for reality. Sadly, I hear similar comments from leaders who are blinded to a world outside of their role.

Somebody else is thinking about your future, I hope you are as well.

Rather than focusing on what you know, think like a competitor who learns what they don’t know so they can be more competitive. Some label this as innovation, I call it an insatiable appetite to learn, to get even better.

“Get even better” are hard words for many leaders to accept when they look around and see others copying what they do. Sustained champions never lose their appetite.

When a hyper-successful person forgets what made him great, he’s doomed to lose the title. You stay number one with the DNA that made you number one, not necessarily with your existing product or services.

Too many companies step onto the winners platform only to forget about what got them there, and they start acting like their industry rather a champion.

Take Emirates Airline, Majid Al Futtaim and DP World as examples, they became number one by doing things differently. They were pioneers who challenged norms, who had the fight to do what no one else was doing. Their industries imitate them because they saw a different future and had the courage to do something about it. Now if they stop doing this, they’ll be in jeopardy.

The best way to stay number one, is to act the way you did on the climb to the winners’ circle.

Whether you’re a company, top athlete, or a hyper successful employee, think like a competitor not a champion. To stay number one, fight as if you’re not.

— The writer is a CEO coach and author of “Leadership Dubai Style”. Contact him at tsw@tommyweir.com