The Business Brickyard

The personal Blog of Howard Mann. Author, Speaker & Entrepreneur. - November 21st, 2008

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity

18
Sep
08

Protecting The History Of Your Business Counts... A Lot

Watching the venerable Lehman Brothers breathe its last gasp of business independence (and the reminders of Bear Stearns similar fate) shatters any illusion that any business is ever "out of the woods" when it comes sustained profitability. Despite what the Government is trying to do, the idea that something is "too big to fail" is flawed logic. Companies fail for a reason and, good or bad, that is how it should be.

But what strikes me the most is how quickly the reputation of the CEO's of these firms go from geniuses to incompetent fools. By the time an Executive gets to the top job at any of these firms they have accomplished quite a lot. But they are only geniuses as long as they perform. True? The truth, like most things, lies somewhere in between.

There is a saying in Golf that a reliable golf swing is only borrowed. Even the great players get in a "groove" for weeks and months and then their swing falls apart. The same is true for the financial genius CEO's. But being a financial genius does not make you a genius CEO.

It's human nature that there will be peaks and valleys and so it is also true for businesses all run by humans. Even ones that are 100+ years old.

What I think is most important is how well the CEO works to minimize the depth of those valleys. The CEO of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are each entrusted with the deep history of these firms and the people it employs. If that is part of the mission, then neither would have bet that history on any one vehicle. Nobody could have guessed that the housing market would fall so far and so fast. Perhaps. But if you are sitting on enough of anything that it could cause the bankruptcy of your firm, regardless of its size, then you are not protecting the history that was entrusted to you.

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Howard Mann is a speaker, author and entrepreneur. He is on a mission to get businesses to thrive in every way, in good times and bad, by relentlessly sticking to their basics. Learn more.

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