thinking/critical

Fight or flight syndrome leaves out an important – and destructive – third reaction. Freeze. Are you doing the business equivalent of the suicidal bunny routine?

The changes you choose to make now will have tremendous impact on the success you can expect in the future. Too many companies are cutting loose important (strategic) talent, eliminating their advertising budgets, changing their marketing strategies, and reducing their operations to customer-unfriendly shells in fear-fueled efforts to survive.

I invite you to ponder two thoughts over the weekend. I’d like you to think about the effects of fear, and the benefits of action.

A depressed economy takes existing conditions and magnifies them. It’s like stop-action photography. The bad business decisions we make that would normally unfold over years, instead unravel in a year, a quarter, or even a month. This is how we explain some organizations in every industry thriving while their competitors contract and fail.

The 24-hour news cycle requires 24-hour news content. The news world looks to itself for reportage. The competition to produce stories leads to little – or rushed – thought and analysis. News consumers dislike ambiguity and crave comfort, so the news media spoon-feeds us certainty and pre-approved bias. The result? Very few people understand the current economy, economic history, or the potential pitfalls and promise of various solutions.