June 22, 2020

6/22: Three Minutes a Day: Inaction is synonymous with failure, not caution

Codrin is CEO of Digital Authority Partners. He has spent over a decade creating successful digital strategies for both Fortune 500 companies and startups. Expertise: Product...

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when CEOs fail, when companies fail

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Three minutes a day take bad business decisions away.

Today's tip: Analysis paralysis is bad for your business. Inaction means failure.

In a hurry? Just watch the video below.

Remember when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer suddenly “retired” in a moment celebrated by many people in the tech industry in a very schadenfreude manner? Ballmer will be remembered for his many great decisions that tripled Microsoft’s revenue over the decade he was in charge, but he will likely be better remembered for his unabashed support for the developer community. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, watch this video on Youtube.

Under the surface of both his undeniable success stories and some failures, Ballmer’s biggest flaw lay in his inability (or unwillingness) to rock the Microsoft boat.

Many companies are also guilty of the same offense.

For example, the best example in 2021 is how Tiktok has become the world’s most valuable startup, when the same concept was released in America almost a decade ago as Vine.

The Tiktok founder doubled down on personalization, but Vine didn’t. Ballmer failed because he didn’t invest in mobile technology when he should have made that front and center of his projects as early as 2007 (or, if we’re being generous, 2008-2009).

Failure to act happens at every single level in corporate America, whether you’re talking about a small, medium, large or enterprise business.

Here’s why.

More often than not, businesses fail because CEOs overplan and underdeliver. Many executives feel they need to always get the right people in place before they can do ANYTHING about their technology stack, product development or marketing efforts.

That is simply the wrong mindset.

In the video above, I talk about a company where I worked seven years ago. The company’s management had an amazing blueprint showing how to innovate digitally, but then due to internal politics, that innovation stalled. I also talk about a medium-sized ecommerce company that approached us over a year ago, but then chose to hire a director of marketing before working with us. A year later, nothing was accomplished, the director got fired, and the company’s CEO is back to asking us to start working on their marketing and SEO efforts right away.

Companies fronted by bold leaders and innovators always succeed. Executives courageous enough to fix their problems as quickly as possible accelerate their growth exponentially.

If you’re reading this, you may think to yourself: “duh, Codrin, what you're saying is obvious.”

But it isn’t. Not by a long shot.

It may seem obvious, but obvious doesn’t always win.

More often than not, startups and medium-sized companies either fail or fail to grow because their executives either want to do too many things at once or don’t want to do anything at all unless they have all their ducks in a row.

Both approaches are bad for business.

Executives should try to use all means necessary to improve their digital products, market positioning, online visibility or growth plans in real time. Small, incremental improvements are always preferable to large-scale projects that take forever to hit the market. Remember McDonalds’ failed $1 billion IT transformation project?

If you’re a company executive with access to a list of improvement areas for your business, don’t make the same mistake. Try to fix as many of these problems as quickly as possible, in an agile fashion. Low-hanging-fruit fixes are profoundly underrated in corporate America, when they should be front and center. Fix what you can right away, and refuse to accept procrastination.

Unfortunately, too many companies fail to realize the importance of quick improvements and piecemeal innovations. They’ll end up just like the characters of South Park when an impending group failure was about to hit them right in the face: