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The Steps from Product Idea to Product Success
Michelangelo once said that his statue of David was embedded in the block of marble and he merely chipped away the edges to reveal it. Is your product idea inside your mind just waiting to come alive? Or, is your product already formed and you...
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New Leadership For A New War
PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to...
Starting a Home Craft Business: Cashing in on your Artistic and Creative Skills!
How can one forget the craft classes at school? You must have
enjoyed putting together colorful pieces of paper and varied
craft stuffs to give form to dolls, teddy bears, boats, aero
planes, flowers and so on. Have you ever considered...
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Business Innovation – Masks and Trance
One useful import from the field of Improvisation is the concept of Masks and Trance to get people thinking in different directions...
Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be...
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Patience Not Panic: Survive and Thrive Through Economic Turbulence
From 28,000 feet, snow still spots parts of Michigan, Illinois and other states further West. The earth looks brown and barren, dark and ugly from this vantage point. But I know that if I could walk the fields and wait patiently, I’d see signs of new growth inching out of hardened earth. I’d eventually find dead-looking tree limbs swelling with rising sap, pushing buds into blossom under the warming sun.
But what if I opted NOT to be patient? What if I panicked, burned the dead-looking trees, cut off limbs, and retreated in disgust within my cocoon? Spring might NEVER come because my shortsighted actions jeopardized the natural course of events.
That’s what has happened with the stock market and many of our companies. It concerns me that such actions can create a rippling self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m concerned that departed talent and trust might not be regained within the workplace. I’m concerned that customers will retreat because quality and service could suffer as employees attempt to fill the shoes of a thinned out workforce. Here’s a hard pill to swallow but perhaps all of us – myself included—have become greedy for the amazing returns and astounding growth of the past eight years. Perhaps we’ve grown fat and lazy instead of prudent and thoughtful.
I think now is the time to focus on what’s important. For our families and our businesses to thrive, we
need to ask ourselves what endures for the long haul and not the short gain. Innovation, engaged and talent-focused employees, customer-focused products and services and a deeply shared commitment to find ways for meaningful contribution carry the day.
By historical standards, we’ve been through far more dramatic financial times. Once the U.S. had 20,000 phone companies and 2000 auto companies. General Motors was once a tech stock. As we say in the coaching world, “from breakdown comes build up.”
I fully intend to be the voice of reasonable optimism. Now—more than ever—we need to meet, to talk, to vocalize our concerns and legitimize our fears so we can figure out a passage through this blip in business history. Philosopher Howard Zinn said that to have hope one does not need certainty, only possibility.
Let us figure out together how to be the bearers of hope.
© 2001 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved. Reprints must include byline, contact information and copyright
About the Author
Eileen McDargh, CSP, CPAE, is an international speaker, author and seminar leader. Her book ‘Work for A Living and Still Be Free to Live’ is also the title of one of her most popular and upbeat programs on Work/Life Balance. For more information on Eileen and her presentations, please call 949-496-8640 or visit her web site at http://www.eileenmcdargh.com.
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