Strategic Discipline Blog

If you’ve been following the markets and the $700 billion financial bailout the most powerful message you can absorb as the market and the financial segment of our economic base absorbs shock waves from the continuing impact of the subprime debacle is this – there’s been a failure in following fundamentals. 

One of my client’s deals directly with the stock market, and underneath the decisions that drove the mortgage problems of the last several years he feels is simple greed. The CEO’s and executive teams for most of the financial industries that are suffering these extreme losses simply were not focused on the fundamentals. They saw an opportunity to make gobs of money in a short time frame and did the expedient rather than make decisions that were sound fundamentally and had any substance of supporting what their institutions stood for.

One person, or even a few individuals can quickly bring down a major institution. Is there any more powerful reason to build a habit of reviewing your Core Values and Purpose on a consistent basis?

Businesses and individuals without the backbone to live to their Core Values and Purpose fall into dangerous traps like this. Perhaps that’s the most disturbing issue facing the stock market and Americans as we approach the next election. The fundamental principles that have ruled our lives are not being followed by the leaders we have in place to upheld them. Greed and short term profit seem to be leading us to a swirling sink hole.

Is your business holding up under the present economic pressure? If you’ve been true to your principles then my belief is while you are may not be having the best year, you are probably faring better than others. 

Sound fundamentals won’t mean every year is a record setter, however maintaining your integrity, girds you against the economic storms that can sink many businesses that lack the character to live to a higher standard of principles.

Let the lesson from this storm be to be on guard, and live to the values that are an integral part of your business, and make sure that if they are integral to your business that you are making them a daily habit to communicate and uphold them as you do business each day.

Most of all remember to keep learning and growing. If there’s one thing this taught us additionally is that those who don’t listen and recognize the tremors rumbling in the marketplace, are doomed to be engulfed by them.