Thanks. All the best in the New Year!

- Greg

Thanks for your input.

Just to be clear. I never said that you shouldn’t have a strategy, but that any strategy ultimately depends on execution. Just because strategy is often overvalued doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable.

- Greg

I do not agree with the point -”Overvaluing Strategies and Undervaluing Processes”.

The reason of disagreement is you create a process because you have a goal (function). Its not other way around.for e.g A Co who is following lower cost strategy like Mc Donald’s would like to have processes that can deliver few items at the fast speed with least cost.Their processes will differ from a restaurant who is selling to those customers that are looking for great variety and with royal prices.

We can say poor implementation of processes can lead you to fail.But You have to have a strategy or goal in place for your customers,employees, and suppliers.

Thank you for sharing the benefit of your experience and expertise. Much appreciated!

- Greg

I believe this is a great article which has generated the high quality responses it deserves. My comments will focus on observations which apply to privately owned businesses and professional practices and causes for their failures.

In many cases there is both a lack of strategic thinking and process improvement. Often this occurs because of the confusion in leadership roles, what has always worked to date (don’t fix it if it isn’t broke)resulting in a sense of being bullet proof, the inability to engage talent at all levels and the lack of leadership and management processes to engage human assets. The feeling of being unappreciated and valued clearly will not yield to innovation and process improvement.

Dependency on one or two clients to provide the majority of the revenue.

Poor and untimely management information to run the business.

Lack of capital and dependable banking relationships.

Boredom and lack of expansion rules or criteria that leads ownership to risk too much to expand their business.

Inappropriate means to solve a problem leading to making the problem worse and resulting in the loss of shared purpose

Inability to reach into the lowest levels where the best ideas and process innovation reside.

Obsession with past successes and excessive pride that does not recognize that being in the right place at the right time had a lot to do with past (unsustainable)success.

This best summarizes some of my observations over the past 35 years and supports your closing statement: “Once management loses the passion for developing superior products, serving their customers and creating a great workplace trouble lies ahead.”

With all this said, I still believe that entrepreneurial businesses properly grown have the best opportunity “to get it right”. Many large organizations have lost focus and forgotten why certain processes were put in place- just go through the motions and do not “walk the talk”. The irony is that all levels of leadership and management in smaller organizations need to be better skilled in maximizing human assets than their counterparts in larger publically traded companies.

Yes. Sad but true…

- Greg

It’s an excellent point and one I fully agree with. I actually did right another post about how to compete in the global age that covers that area. You can see it here.

The key to success is creating a place where people want to go.

- Greg

Very well written article. I agree to entire of it.

One point which I think is missing is Engagement.

During “Good” times there is a rush of talent and competencies in the company, and during these times many over-confident companies treat employees as just workers, not as partners in their success. They don’t develop a culture of engagement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_engagement)

How many market leading companies are also in the “Best places to work”? Few but not many.

Often times Engagement is also one of the hidden key reason why Big giants fail at some point in time.

Thanks for compiling and sharing the key thoughts on How companies fail.

Best,
Nikhil

Note to Jean-Louis:
It is desirable and recommended to look at the positive side. The things become truly positive once you know the negative side as well. Often times, it is best to learn how not to fail while learning on how to succeed.

Mostly people are too busy on learning only how to succeed, and once they are successful, maybe due to fortunate reasons as Greg mentioned, they become over-confident and write their own script for failure in future.