thinking/critical

At the heart of the matter is the idea that marketing resources are scarce and must be carefully administered. Well, all resources are ultimately scarce, though there is no doubt that marketing resources can be expensive. Because executives have a difficult time measuring and proving how effective their marketing dollars are, it feels better to cut them than to worry about spending indiscriminately.

Some policies are unavoidable. Federal labor law policies are an example of that. But just because something is a federal law doesn’t make it a desirable policy. Look at all the money and lives wasted on enforcing an absolutely unenforceable drug policy – nobody is accountable, though we tax payers continue to pay the accountants. If policy constraints are costing us at the corporate level, what are they doing to us at the level of national government?

Here’s where the confusion between chaos and order, creativity and confusion begins to cost. The entrepreneur is generally a person who dislikes any restrictions on their freedom. They don’t want a boss, they don’t want to follow rules, and they don’t want to be told what to do. Creation of systems is not their strong suit. Not only that, but they resent any system to which they are subjected. But the dynamics of communicating and planning with 3 people are significantly different than the dynamics of communicating and planning with 20 people. And the challenges expand exponentially with each doubling of the workforce. Systems, the very thing renounced by the entrepreneur, are necessary to grease the wheels of a group of people trying to work together effectively.

Good decision-making is often defined as finding the opportunities that are the closest match to the characteristics and end results we desire. This approach consumes a lot of time. What if you started with elimination steps first? Could you speed up your decision-making and improve the quality of your overall effort?