Understanding organizational success has been a constant concern for governments and businesses. All businesses struggle to achieve it, and even after brief periods of success, it often fades away. We asked the question, is there a reason behind the lack of sustainable organizational success? We found some surprisingly general principles that are not usually considered. This research paper investigates the novel general principle that organizational success is proportional to the amount of novel information regularly brought into an organization. This applies to governmental organizations and businesses alike. In addition, for governments, success is proportional to the enforcement of rules and regulations that enforce contracts, provide a legal system, and mitigate corruption. We found experiments, surveys, and observations in the literature that explain these findings. And we are including in this report our own personal observations that shed light on the issues. Because of the generality of the principles, this research is novel and of far-reaching significance, as it reveals general hidden factors that influence it. These hidden factors apply to companies large & small as well as entire nations.