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A few days after he took over as interim head football coach at Clemson University in the middle of the 2008 season, the (then) 38-year-old Dabo Swinney, with no head coaching experience, attended a breakfast with the board of trustees that would set the tone for the championship program he intended to build.

Simon Sinek, author of the perennial bestseller “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Action,” put it best when he said, “Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first.”

When you think about it, no matter what industry you’re in, the market landscape is shifting at an unprecedented pace. And if our organizations are going to stay on the cutting edge and achieve sustainable success, we must continually make adjustments.

It’s easy to keep our integrity intact when things are going well—when our leadership status or company success is not threatened.

“Most organizations exploit only a fraction of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital that is available to them. But the healthy ones tap into almost all of it.”

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”

These words by Abraham Lincoln capture the essence of what maturity looks like in a leader.

Do your job!

This three-word mantra is the foundational philosophy that has kept the New England Patriots atop the standings in the N.F.L. for nearly two decades.

A major deal that looked so promising yesterday is starting to unravel. An employee you entrusted with a lot of responsibility makes a critical and costly mistake. A vendor “drops the ball” and puts a significant customer order in jeopardy.

When we avoid accountability, we will eventually be forced to accept it.

There’s a fine line between ambition and greed. And it could make the difference in whether or not a company will become a noteworthy success or a cautionary tale.