Month: August 2019

Your company, how would you describe the corporate journey today – making progress, better than a year ago, energized, innovative, an exciting future ahead?  

Today’s business world lives under constant evaluation at a microscopic level. This comes now because of 24/7 business coverage, apps on phones, constant stock price/market updates, social media and all its topics. This is all going on while companies/employees are processing orders, stocking inventory, production, sales, marketing, shipments, billing, collecting, security, IT, the day-to-day stuff.

One clear point surfaces from my consulting years of experience and innovation journey, Peter Drucker labeled it.  “Businesses are brittle and fragile.”  The brittle, fragile nature of a corporation or industry is visibly before us. Some examples are:

One need only look at retail in the US – Amazon, Walmart, Target or Sears, Macy’s, J. C. Penneys. 

Another perspective about the fragility of your business, just watch the stock market. One mention about tariffs, your results, your competitor’s guidance or yours and there is change in the company’s stock price.  You know the “experts’” projection drill – exceed, stock price goes up normally, miss and stock price normally drops.

The external factors on the corporate journey are significant – political, trade policy, social media, conflicts. The internal issues of politics, protectionism, IP and other distractions are not visible to the outside world but require valuable time to resolve.  

Restructuring, reorganization or mergers are an ongoing ingredient that impacts the corporate journey.  These seem to be an annual exercise for some corporations.  It normally has a single focus, reduce costs but the long-term outcomes are not always what is expected.  For some, these take longer, costs more, people impacted, withdraw or leave causing various internal issues. 

In the corporate journey the steps do matter. They matter because monthly, quarterly, annual results are published. Professional investors, pension fund managers, Wall Street “Experts,” day traders, financial institutions and silent partners are watching.

Any corporation can reduce risk for its future by two things.  First, the existing business needs to improve its results year-over-year.  You can improve your performance year-over-year by identifying waste, hidden costs and more.  Without a viable existing business, it is difficult to get to what’s next.  For the corporate journey, what’s next comes about by innovation. Innovation is hard work, it needs to be planned, it needs a structured approach, led by the right leaders and protected from the existing business.  Improving year-over-year performance and innovation are inseparable pursuits. These can contribute to making your company flexible and stronger.  Flexible and stronger is better than brittle and fragile. All the best on your corporate journey.

Are you a walker? Do you carry a pedometer or have an app on your phone?  In past conversations with my colleagues – the need to do 10,000 steps today and every day was a familiar topic.  Steps equate to walking, exercise, healthy.

The following quote is attributable to Thomas Edison – “As an innovator, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, ‘How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” Edison replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.’ “

Now to our professional journey to our spot right now, how does it feel? Our pedometer for our career is a resume, hard copy or digital version.  It tracks our steps only (certainly less than 10,000).

We identify the period of time at each organization. We track accomplishments and list them. We track our position titles and list them. We track our employers’ names or our own business identities. Through the years, we experience many results.  We tend to keep the failures off of our LinkedIn Profile and resume. These failures may define us as much as our successes or more and certainly we learn from them.

We all take steps to move our career forward or enough to keep food on the table, mortgage paid, heat, A/C and provide for our family. In regards to our career, let’s not boil it down to success or failure but steps toward our individual destination.  Thomas Edison knew his destination – light bulb.  The steps didn’t matter – what matters is the destination.  Add up all the company names, job titles, accomplishments, failures and colleagues that we met. It is not the number of steps that we list on our resume but the destination that we are pursuing. In our career we want as few steps as possible which equates to a healthy, better decisions, streamlined and successful career.  This is not how it works generally and let’s not be discouraged by the number of steps.  It is about the destination.

Continue strong in your journey to your destination.

“Rough path leads to the stars” (Apollo 1 Memorial. Kennedy Space Center).