Please don't mistake action for strategy!

In the world today where every company seems to fear losing market share and is looking over their shoulder their are two things going on. The first is that some companies are just frozen by fear. Let's call them dear in the headlights and say that they will not be with us long. You can be frozen by fear and expect to last too long. The second type of company is far more interesting and I think worthy of examination.

There are companies who believe that in order to succeed in a business environment they must do something, anything to take that next step. As a result they are taking ill advised short term steps which in the long term will cause far more harm than good and will ultimately result in a weaker brand. The usual scenario with these organizations is that someone in a senior capacity is getting restless and wants something done so he or she can feel better about themselves. This is usually ends up with a useless news release or some silly cutback that does nothing but eliminate an avenue for potential growth.

Senior executives, including the CEO, are by nature a nervous lot and generally speaking only see out one quarter in advance. They also do not see issues of branding or that a long term strategy result in anything because the current obsession is for short term results. Sadly, this leads to long term failure.

One company that proves the point that strategy trumps action is Amazon.com. Several years ago, they gave up on briefing analysts and decided that they wanted to run the organization with goals 5 years out as well as progress marks on the way to those goals. What is most amazing is that this program has been a spectacular success. As you might have guessed, there was a lot of snickering by the so called experts, but the last laugh was by Amazon. Now they can focus on how to fix any problems with their company and don't need to take the myopic view of needing to meet quarterly numbers.

From a marketing stand point this is bliss. Marketing can only succeed in an environment where there is a long term plan and a set of achievable goals. Marketing is about selling goods to the customers, not trying to please the blood suckers on Wall Street who are the greatest road block to a company's success.

So many companies need to reshape how they do business and realize that managing quarter to quarter is in fact counterproductive. It promotes myopic thinking and rewards short term gains while destroying any chance for long term success. Hopefully the success of Amazon will help promote the ideal of managing for long term success but the real agent of change will be when MBA programs learn to value both ethics and a global vision of corporate success. When that happens we may actually see a renaissance in global business.