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L. Denise Jackson

Founder & CEO,

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What do you think is the biggest mistake corporate America has made in the last 5 years

Either answer with one word or phrase and if you choose to explain, that would be great.

Cutting training and development. Not investing in employees results in...

Topics: Corporate Culture corporate responsibility
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    Wade Crum

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    Aug 26 2012: Back when my two oldest sons were in grade school, I took them fishing. We sat on the dock an began to fish. As you may know, sometimes it takes a while to catch anything. After about 5 mins of casting and reeling, the boys, being very competitive, decide they would try to impede the success of the other. So they began casting in the same areas. So we spent the next hour casting, reeling in and untangling their lines. I think we see this same phenomenon in business today.

    When ever we (the corporation) find a competing business that is producing a better product than our own.....we buy that company, down size it and eliminate the competition. We also buy out distibutors that sell our competiors products in attempt to decrease market mobility of the competing products. So instead of spending efforts on creating a better product we invest those dollars to stomping out the innovators.

    Today's CEO (many not all) are 5th generation CEOs. These individuals have a diminshed appreciation of how the company was started through hard work and ingenuity. So they practice techniques that only seek to hold market share and decrease the market share of competitors. While this looks great on the books for that particular year what they are really doing in the end is actually reducing their market share by reducing demand. How so? When workers get laid off due to corporate restructure via said practices, the workers are forced to lower their buying habits until they find compreble salary elsewhere. For a large percentage of these displaced workers, compreble salaries are not found. This reduces demand for everything not just what said corporation produces. So as more and more workers (consumers) are displaced, the market shrinks globally. So while your profit margins go up your revenues actually go down.

    In essence, we are spending our time untangling lines as opposed to catching fish.
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      L. Denise Jackson

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      Aug 27 2012: Wade you are just right. I had to laugh at this because It is an excellent example.

      Have a great week!

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