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Okay, moving this post from Yahoo! 360 to here... I guess I do prefer Blogger.

A good article

The Secret Life of the CEO: Is the economy just built to flip?

Snippets (er, long snippets...)

"But here's the litmus test: If it weren't for all of the spectacular opportunity, how many people would have been drawn into doing what they were doing? It might be accurate to call something a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," but that does not make it a reason to participate. Creative, passionate people who invent work of real value will have many once-in-a-lifetime opportunities."

"Here's the essential truth of our current situation: The real problem has stayed the same, regardless of the direction of the market. First we went through a spiraling-up phase, and people lost their bearings as they got caught up in the great melee of opportunity. Now we're in a downward spiral, and people have lost their bearings in a scramble of uncertainty. It's the exact same pattern in reverse: people merely reacting to circumstances, rather than doing anything fundamentally creative.

The distinction isn't between a market that's going up and a market that's going down. It's between people who are fundamentally creators and people who are only reactors, who take their cues from the outside world.

If you did a word search across my research materials on the greatest company builders of the past 100 years, you would find almost no mention of "competitive strategy." Not that those builders had no strategy; they clearly did. But they did not craft their strategies principally in reaction to the competitive landscape or in response to external conditions and shocks. Without question, they kept a wary eye on the brutal facts.The fundamental drive to transform and build their companies was internal and creative. It didn't matter whether they faced a crisis (as did Thomas J. Watson Sr. at IBM, who never resorted to layoffs in the Great Depression) or whether they faced calm (as did Walt Disney when he conceived of Disneyland). The leaders who built enduring great companies showed a creative inside-out approach rather than a reactive outside-in approach. In contrast, the mediocre company leaders displayed a pattern of lurching and thrashing, running about in frantic reaction to threats and opportunities.

If I could bring all of my students back into the classroom, I would remind them of David Packard's admonition that in the long run, "more companies die of indigestion than starvation." If a company focuses on making creative contributions that fall in the middle of three intersecting circles -- what it is passionate about, what it can be the best in the world at, and what best drives a sustained profitable economic engine -- then growth will likely follow.

The research that went into my books showed that mediocre companies tend to focus on growth for growth's sake, whereas truly great companies focus on making creative, profitable contributions that are squarely focused on those three circles. Regardless of whether the market is up or down, great companies that adhere to those circles are, in the long run, likely to have more growth than they can handle -- indigestion, not starvation. The same holds true for creative people who discover what they are passionate about, what they are genetically encoded for, and how they can build an economic engine based on their contributions. Those who operate at the intersection of all three circles are more likely to face the problem of too much opportunity in their lives, not too little.

The Important Distinction The stock market may go up - or down. But according to Jim Collins, that isn't the key distinction. Regardless of the market, what matters is whether you are a creator who is internally driven or a reactor who takes cues from the outside.

Creator

Internally driven, externally aware
Pursues creative strategy
Discovers genetic talents and applies them
Builds an economic engine to get things done
Many once-in-a-lifetime opportunities
Growth follows from creative contribution
Ambitious first and foremost for the work
Focuses on building relationships
Values self-improvement for its own sake
Sets 10-to-25-year audacious goals
Core values inform all efforts
Seeks self-actualization

Reactor

Externally driven, without intrinsic passion
Pursues competitive strategy
Agenda of competence set by the outside world
Gets things done to make a lot of money
Few once-in-a-lifetime opportunities
Seeks growth for growth's sake
Ambitious first and foremost for self
Focuses on transactions
Driven largely by comparison to others
Five years is long-term
Nothing is sacred; expedience rules
Seeks success

The question: Which side are you on?
Abraham Maslow defined self-actualization as the process of discovering what you were made to do and making a commitment to do it with excellence. That is what the three circles are all about: making self-actualization work in a capitalist society. No one ever reached self-actualization simply by seizing a bubble moment to get rich and retire. Similarly, no one ever self-actualized by taking the cockroach strategy of just hunkering down and trying to survive until difficult times passed.

There are, of course, no guarantees. Luck is always a factor, and the dice can roll against you. But that does not change the fact that those who go about their lives and work with the passion to create and build in pursuit of self-created goals are the only ones who will find meaning in the end -- regardless of whether the dice roll their way. The fact of the matter is that life is short, and we only carry to our graves the inner integrity of our efforts. Only we know how we lived our lives, whether we cut corners, whether we did anything of value -- or whether we took the built-to-flip approach to life."


Still swimming around trying to find the intersection of the three circles...