How Did Black Sabbath Get Their First Number One Album in 46 Years? By Reclaiming Their Original Blueprint

Ozzy Osbourne sold 100 million albums worldwide as a solo artist and as a founding member of Black Sabbath. He was a television star and sat comfortably on the throne of his (and his wife Sharon’s) own making. Yet he still dreamed of a greater feat. “I suppose the one ambition I have left,” he wrote in his bestselling 2009 memoir, I Am Ozzy, “is to get a number one album in America.”
... We know from research that when a company tries to change its blueprint, the company’s performance suffers. As Dr. Heather Vough, a professor of management at McGill University who writes about identity processes in small companies, told me, “Founders’ values and identities set the tone for their organization that persists across time. Certain values become taken-for-granted beliefs about what the firm stands for and why it exists. These beliefs are shared by insiders as well as external stakeholders. Research has shown that if these values change, especially early on, the organization can become destabilized and has a greater chance at failure.”

Read full article: Forbes, June 26, 2013