What Can We Learn?

The most vibrant people are the ones that keep learning throughout their lives. The same goes for businesses. John Gerzema, in his great book, The Brand Bubble, tells us the same regarding great brands. Those brands have to keep learning, evolving and growing to maintain their leadership position.

At our companies, we deal with success and failure daily, but how often do we learn from them? I'm guessing not nearly enough.

When we fail, do we determine why, or do we merely conduct a witch hunt? Do we own up and learn, or do we point fingers elsewhere? The great performers, companies and brands all learn and evolve from those learnings.

Even tougher- do we learn from our successes? Why did that project turn out better this year than last year? Do we know? Have we figured that out, or do we just pat ourselves on the back and say, "We're great."

I think the reason we avoid a deep understanding of why we have succeeded is because we want to also avoid the discomfort of facing those times when we have failed.

Fight just as hard to seek the answers as to why you succeeded as you do why you failed, and you may become that great company, performer or brand.

Barry LaBov
LaBov and Beyond
http://www.labov.com/

The Business Lessons in this Bailout Mess

AIG execs took huge bonuses, some other company that got bailout money threw a big party or entertained customers or flew a jet or sent money overseas...it goes on and on. The public is fed up and wants it stopped. Sounds simple: just have the government stop all that. The job of stopping all that becomes, well, a job. Energy is put into that. Those bailout companies now will add jobs for people to make sure that they are complying and won't get into more trouble. All that energy, time and investment will not be valuable in growing those companies or in making them profitable.

The business lesson - and I'm sure the bailout companies are thinking this - is don't get into that position in the first place.

Over the past several years, many companies were either doing wrong ethically or, more likely, were not running their businesses in a responsible manner. They were blindly acquiring, merging, expanding, and/or borrowing beyond reason as if the party would never end. The companies that were run correctly - quite often they were the fiscally conservative ones - looked less exciting or attractive.

But, during recessions, we start to value businesses that are run fiscally conservative and stable. As the saying goes, the worm has turned. A well run, healthy company is golden today. It looks quite beautiful.

A recession teaches us lessons in how to run a business. If we don't follow those lessons, our companies disappear or, if we're "lucky," someone else takes us over. (Which gives "luck" a bad name.)


Barry LaBov, CEO
LaBov and Beyond
www.labov.com