These were some of the pertinent questions posed by Brains On Fire's resident firestarter Spike Jones some time ago.

This is too big a topic to try to cover in only one post, but the least I can do is to try and get the discussion started. Here is a short list of what you might call purple cow killers. These business diseases can strike a perfectly cool little company with quasi-infinite potential, and turn it into a bumbling corporate flunkie faster than you can say "I.P.O.":

1) Routine

People lose their passion for things they love when those things become routine. Think about it. Your first day at a new job. Your first drive in a new car. The first time you see a good movie. A first kiss. Everything is exciting at first... but then you eventually get jaded. The excitement wanes. You lose some of your passion. Details become someone else's problem. So do your products. So do your customers. Deny it all you want, it's true... and it's inevitable unless you do something about it.

The trick is to keep the fire burning by keeping things fresh. If routine is a passion-killer, then build a corporate ecosystem that actively fights routine. Easier said than done? Nope. Quite the contrary. (But that's a topic for another day.)

2) Bureaucracy

The bigger you get, the more you start to rely on procedures. The more you start to say things like "no" and "can't" and "we'll have to charge you extra for that". The harder it becomes for the people at the top of your organization to stay in direct contact with their customers. That's bad. It shouldn't take thirty minutes for a customer to get a return authorization. It shouldn't take seven transfers to get a product manager on the phone. Nobody should ever get the runaround. Ever.

Bureaucracies slow things down and build walls between employees and between you and your customers. As you grow, take the time to develop systems that overcome this problem. Again, this isn't hard, but you can't let these things fall to chance. You have to be just as proactive in building your company's structure as you are in building its markets.

Don't lose sight of the fact that a company isn't a building or a logo or a set of rules. A company is always, first and foremost, a group of people united to pursue a common interest. And while you may not think of it that way, this applies to your employees as well as your customers. As a business leader, one of your jobs is to make sure these people are all connected. If your organization disconnects them from one another, you are majorly shooting yourself in the foot.

3) Comfort

If you've only worked on the agency side of the business, chances are that you've never heard these dreaded words: "We've been doing things this way for ____ years, and we've been successful at it, so there's no reason to change."

(Nails on a chalkboard.)

Yeah, well, in the wise words of Jack Spade, "Never believe anything you've done is successful." The minute you do, you're dead. End of story. In business, getting comfortable = getting lazy.

Reality check: Markets change. Technologies and tastes change. People grow old and younger ones take their place. Renewal = relevance. Even old-school luxury houses like Bentley and Cartier have adapted to new markets. (If you don't believe me, watch MTV sometime.)

If you don't constantly question what you could do better or where you might go next, you're done. Period.

4) Nepotism

It's natural to want to surround yourself with people you know and trust. It's another thing altogether to promote buddies and family members to positions they are neither qualified for, nor passionate about.

Furthermore, while surrounding yourself with people who won't ever challenge you might be a nice ego boost, it is certainly no way to keep your company moving in any kind of direction.

If all your key managers are passionate about are their 401K plans and their annual retreats to Tahiti, then it's no surprise that your company has lost its focus.

5) Fear

"Show me a guy who's afraid to look bad, and I'll show you a guy you can beat every time." (Lou Brock)

Yep.

The older you get, the less chances you are likely to take with your career. The larger your company is, the less likely you are to risk screwing something up.

Too much to lose, you see.

So you stop taking chances. You start worrying about what your "competitors" are doing. Instead of leading them, you let them lead you. Next thing you know, you've exported all of your production power overseas, your quality takes a dive, your customer service is anything but, every bit of talent you ever managed to hire has walked out on you, and you find yourself on the losing end of a price war. Other than just plain dishonesty, that's how great companies fail.

Well, bollocks. Playing it "safe" is the fastest way to screw yourself over. (And your customers.)

If you don't have the huevos to stretch the boundaries now and again, to be an innovator, a pioneer, and to sometimes be okay with making some people really hate your latest product, then you need to find another occupation. Being a leader isn't about staying put. It's about... well, leading.

6) Denial

Most companies who don't get it think that they do get it. That's the tragedy. Once your distribution channels are well-developed, once you have thousands of active accounts, once you've been a market leader for twenty, thirty, forty years, the sheer momentum of your growth can carry you into another decade or two. As long as your growth closely matches whatever opportune economic indicator you are following, things might look pretty decent.

Labels: bureaucracy, denial, fear, nepotism, routine

"The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow."

- William Pollard.


That's worth framing and hanging in every meeting room from Portland to Tahiti (via Paris).

Thanks to Tom Asacker for digging that one up for us, and for his fantastic post on the very topic I wanted to explore today: What traps should exciting new companies be on the lookout for? As you can imagine, this post was going to be long. (Or at least long-ish.) Thanks to Tom's impeccable timing, you won't have to suffer through another endless essay. (See? Your good deeds are already starting to pay off.)

Check this out (again, from Tom's post):

- Donald Sull
(Revival of the Fittest: Why Good Companies Go Bad an How Great Managers Remake Them.)


So... your new mission every day is to keep it fresh. That's it. Whether you're in the business of designing ads, repairing engines, selling shoes or answering calls from angry customers, don't ever, ever, ever let routine set in. Try different things. Learn something new from every customer. From every sale. From every design challenge. From every product launch. From every commercial you hear on the radio. From every movie you catch on cable. From the games your kids play. From magazines you've never picked up.

Keep it fresh. Shake things up. Kill the routine before it starts killing you.

Ad go read Tom's full post. It's very good.

Have a great Monday, everyone. :)


photo by F360: Pita posing for the camera.

Labels: agile creativity, arrogance, brands, relationships, routine, success