Why Business fail – A leadership Lesson

For Some odd reasons people have started reading my blogs and articles, that really surprises me.. We all think we are the most busy bee on this whole earth; we don’t have time to unlearn, relearn, or at least learn and enhance our skills. I would like to thank all those who are collecting pearls; well for me knowledge is more than that. In my last blog about leadership lessons, I wrote about taking risk and why should leaders take risk? And I see a whopping number of leaders viewing that Blog. Firstly I would like to thank all of you for keeping me motivated, it would be great if you guys can spare some and leave comments as well so that I can write better as learn.

"Today I would like to go back to my childhood and try to tell you a compelling story which would demonstrate all that we have learned about why Organizations fail. As I write in one company they are changing CEO every quarter and I would like to wish the new CEO all the luck".

Lets get straight to the story, my father had small shop and he was stunningly successful we had a wonderful life. He made a wonderful business for almost ten long years and it was going rock solid. I was considered as the hottest, smartest, and greatest hope. For my dad he was admired by all, because he was a successful businessman. He use to buy and sell anything and everything he even bought skin of sheep and sold it for a lucrative profit. I can say we were leading a fab life, one day a shock stuck like a lightning to us. That day we lost the business and my dad was unable to take that change nor were we ready for that change. He did everything under his power to make sure it runs smoothly but I suppose he was reactive than proactive. I some times don’t understand why we do silly things, but we do honestly..

On that day I realized and learned a very important lesson, when change strikes there won’t be a place to hide. I was thinking how could this happen? I probably was 16 when all these things happened. I was growing as a young and an ambitious man…. It was little weirdo, and surely tough we went all that we could some people call it the worst days in our life. However as Winston Churchill said some think like this while UK was going through tough times, “We are not going through tough times, we are going through the best and if we can survive now, we can survive ever”. I feel we almost forget our success when failure struck…. We survived through the storm of my father’s failure, and I feel those days taught us more lessons than any other..

There were couple of questions I asked myself….how could some thing change so drastically overnight, how businesses can fail miserably. What my dad could have done to avoid? Why does business fail?

Below I have expounded on some of the points in my article about what usually goes wrong with all the businesses, these business houses are like blue skies in summer season. You can see them but they disappear soon….

Leader - As always firstly the 100% of the business get closed because of the leadership, I knew that my dad was a fine leader may not be great. I feel his arrogance being the best in the business killed his appetite for learning and innovation. Like wise many leaders make this mistake of loosing interest and they stay feeling nice their comfort zone. As Charles Simic pointed “Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships”. We forget to envision, and see the future that’s where it all ends….

Interestingly as per a research small business fail because of the senior management and the leaders/ owners in Canada. Failing Concerns: Business Bankruptcies in Canada . That’s the same situation in any country, it depends upon the leader, directors, CEO’s and people in the senior position to show the way. However they some times seem as if they were lost and so business gets lost as well.

The second reason why business fail is “a poor leader hires poor people”, there has been millions, billions of articles and books on why people are important. I felt that most of businesses fail cause of they hire poor, illogical, incapable. A smart leader knows that it’s never a one man show; it’s the team which puts him in the front. I have seen couple of poor leaders who are as useless as anything. Working under them makes employees unproductive and they are so dead!!! They are like the leaf falling down and down, it knows it’s falling down but they don’t know why, where?  I think Theodor Roosevelt concluded it rightly “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat. What is the point of living and leading like dead, if you are working under some one like this leave the organization soon, they will soon stop selling.

Now that we know two most important reasons why businesses fail, let’s look at the last one, businesses fail because they don’t know a thing about the business they are doing? “It’s funny but that’s the fact, I just laugh at these idiots who run shows who don’t even know what they are doing”? How can you ever succeed when you don’t know what you are doing? At least did you make an effort to learn and know the business before opening the shutter? Well as always change is constant and people forget to change as per the market, my dad knew about his own ground however change struck him like serpent which was long waiting. I feel leaders in today’s world need to know one things which is the key for success, learn, change, learn and change, learn and change………………………………………………………… Goes on, if you don’t then change will change you”.