Pursuit of Flaw – Part 2

Previous post was about the importance of change in the survival of enterprise.

But the last few months in America have been the celebration or at least massive reinforcement of failed business plans. From the banking and financing failures all the way to the auto industry bailouts and power corruption we are parading the panic of not being able to admit that things as they are do not compete.

So instead of changing… we’re just going to pour more money into something that failed and expecting it to change? How?

You know what I am really surprised at? That nobody from the newspaper and magazine industry has come up to ask for a bailout. The industry that has suffered the most by far has been the specialized and “breaking news” coverage a day or a week or at times a month later. Turns out here are better, more trusted, more enjoyable and more timely way to get information, even with a lot more variety. Even in our little SMB space, the trade rag has jumped the shark and been reduced to a few pages of ads coated in some self promotion (I guess that’s all that’s left when you take out Microsoft whoring) and that’s the one that hasn’t all but disappeared.

Are we seeing any of these industries making significant changes? When you look at it, most of the newspapers and magazines aren’t designed to spread information and provoke you to think (like Harvard Business Review for example) but to provide the bare minimum of relevant coverage to whore out as many pages to the advertisers as possible. The same hit that the newspapers got from the web is now being felt by the online media. Let’s face it, when you lose touch with your audience and only look at your ad revenues and focus on maximizing it instead of serving your audience…. what happens to your audience?

Same goes for the banking and credit industry.

Same goes for the auto and transportation industry.

They have lost their touch with the people and the consumers of their products. As a result, their products have started to suck and put more distance between their clients needs – there is no better example of this than US Airways noting that it will now charge it’s passengers for water! As Jay Leno mentioned last night: “the oxygen masks are now coin operated.”

You cannot resurrect bad ideas with more money.’

Sometimes though, it’s more comfortable to prolong the pain than to come to terms with failure/death. Every year, every December, every company needs to have a honest look at itself and its numbers and find out what to do with it’s disappointments.