Are you on your way up or in a downward spiral? Do you know?

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These are the executive and management actions of those companies on their way out of business:

  • Cutting costs as a key growth strategy

  • Cutting middle management/staff as a healthy profit generator

  • Not taking executive bonuses

  • Holding individuals accountable for not getting the system results they needed

  • Continued outsourcing of core business systems and processes

  • Performance management directed at people

  • Talking transformation and doing project management (selling projects and regurgitating Power Point slides)

  • Great marketing with implementation that does not make a difference (words with few results)

For some enterprises, it will only take a year to fail; for a Fortune 500 corporation, it may take 5-10 years for their demise.  Some businesses deserve to go out of business.  I repeat, some businesses deserve to go out of business.  For those that lack leadership, it is only a matter of time.  Which path is your organization on?

Originally written in February 2014