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Over the weekend, S&P downgraded the credit rating of the United States, something that was unthinkable not such a short time ago. This morning, markets worldwide are tumbling. As you know, we don’t talk about politics here unless those political activities bring us enlightenment from a business perspective and I can’t think of a more perfect example than this.
To reduce this to its simplest form, the credit downgrade was caused (and I’m NOT placing blame on either side here) by our “leaders'” inability to govern. The effects of this are mostly unfelt yet, but the ones we’re already feeling are pretty bad. But let’s keep it to business, shall we?
In his farewell column, David Leonhardt summed it up nicely:
The malaise obviously has several causes, some of which are beyond our control. One major cause, however, is entirely our doing. We do not spend enough time focusing on our actual economic problems.
We are too often occupied with distractions, rather than trying to answer a simple question: What works?
I’d urge you to read the piece in its entirety. The things I took away were very simple business points: we can’t make deals without dialog, we can’t create win-win solutions without compromise, and we need to pay attention to facts. None of us can run our businesses whilst ignoring the realities of our markets, our customers, and our internal workings. The result of doing so is chaos or calamity – just look at our government.
I don’t know where the markets will be when you read this. Maybe all is well; maybe it’s another Black Monday. Either way, it’s probably a short term issue. The bigger problem is that something is pretty broken. Focusing on ancillary issues (dress codes, the stationary font) while ignoring fundamental problems (lousy customer service, unhappy staff) in your business is dumb. In D.C. it seems everyone is more concerned with scoring points for reelection commercials than with fixing what ails us.
If it was my business I’d call a staff meeting and commit everyone – in writing – to a different way of thinking about things and to keeping our collective eyes on the underlying issues while resolving problems via dialog and compromise. I’d hold people to that commitment too via evaluations and rewards. What would you do?
Consult Keith 