From the book "Confronting Reality: Doing what matters to get things right" (Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan; Crown Publishing Group; available on Amazon.com), let's talk about the reasons for business failures highlighted by the authors:
- Filtered information
- Selective hearing
- Wishful thinking
- Fear
- Emotional over-investment
- Unrealistic expectations of the capital markets
There are more that we can think of: incompetence, lack of vision, being out-of-touch with reality, denial, arrogance, greed, etc. that destroy businesses.
As a business leader, here are a few things that you can do avoid, or at least, minimize failures. We call them the iProceed's Essentials of Leadership:
- Don't get married to an idea or ideology or product or business.
- When in doubt, look at the numbers. Fortunately, numbers don't lie but people do.
- Don't punish the bearer of bad news.
- Get off your ass and walk the hallways; not only of your company but also those of your customers.
- Learn to ask tough and uncomfortable questions of your colleagues and customers.
- It is good to be optimistic but optimism without a dose of reality is fantasy and businesses don't run on fantasies.
- Don't surround yourself with "yes-women" and "yes-men". It is simply not a good idea to have "right hand" people. As a leader you need to treat everyone the same way. Yes, there will be differences in the capabilities of your subordinates and some will need to be pampered more than others but forming a close group of those that you like is an invitation to disaster.