2026-05-17 Sunday - What You Need To Hear - Not What You Want To Hear

 A needful message:

I know you didn't hear the answer you wanted, or expected.

You wanted to hear the gold-plated answer for strategic initiatives.  

But, I have analyzed your company and operations - and what you sorely need is attention to the basics; to execution; to customer service; to quality; to efficiency; to reducing bloated costs. 

Based on my decades of field observations, what most companies call "strategic initiatives" are abject miserable failures - either never launching, never achieving an ROI, or eventually crashing & burning. Few survive longer than 2-3 years. Time after time, expenditures of time and money that would have been better spent honing the fundamentals.  

I told you what you need to hear.

(This painting, for me, is a metaphor. For life is a voyage...and there will always be ships that are in distress. Ships that are approaching danger, some that are just escaping. Some that steer well clear of danger, and others that rush upon reefs with wild abandon - heedless of the warnings of others. Some ships will crash upon the rocks - and others may yet avoid such disaster. Keen eyes are needed to read the charts, to scan the horizon, to read the currents, to know the shifting patterns of wind.)

 

[A 1667 painting by the Dutch artist, Ludolf Backhuysen, 
"Ships in Distress off a Rocky Coast", 
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.]

 

 

Also see my LinkedIn companion post.