Every week for the past year, business people have come into my office at MSCO, their dreams strewn in pieces on the floor.

Savaged by an economy that is far worse than the statistics alone can portray, they see their corporate revenues slashed in half.  Their profits blown away.  Their cash flow barely strong enough to keep the doors open.

The stories they tell are virtually identical, but I know from years of experience, that the endings will be different.  For many, this brush with disaster will be the path that leads, twisting and turning, to their downfall.

They will slash all spending, cut staff, relocate to smaller quarters and take an ever smaller and more pessimistic view of not only their businesses, but of their lives. They will see their circumstances as a result of personal failure and they will reside in the valley of pity as far as the heart and mind can reach.

But for others, the next chapter will be a climb from the depths of passing despair to a place on the ziggurat of success and achievement that surpasses anything they have known before. They will examine the reasons for the decline, refuse to blame it on macroeconomics, resist the temptation to find fault in others, rethink the puzzle pieces and reassemble them into a new configuration that takes them out of the valley and onto a new pinnacle.

Adversity is a blessing that, if viewed properly, provides for invaluable insights and serves a crucible that tests your resolve, guts, creativity and most important, your determination (or lack of it) to prevail over the challenges that every human being must face in our lifetimes.

The truth is, there is always an answer.  Always a way out.  Always a strategy for turning the Vanquished into the Victors.  If you carry this knowledge in your core, you are immune from failure. Your disasters lead inexorably to triumph.

Warm regards,

Mark Stevens
CEO, MSCO
P.S. – Join my marketing and business development community on Facebook and share in our ongoing engagement.
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A couple quick updates for you all…

I was quoted in a REUTER’s article today discussing Carl Icahn. Here is the link —> http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE67T50Y20100830

Also, I will be speaking on “Varney & Co” tomorrow on FOX BUSINESS CHANNEL @ 10:30 AM EST. We will be discussing the “Obama Brand.” It’s a very interesting topic. Hope you can tune in.

In October of 1962, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the youngest  president of the United States, had to make a momentous, possibly tragic decision.

Whether to face down the Russians on the high seas at the palpable risk of igniting a nuclear war. If Kennedy made the wrong decision, much of the world might have gone up in a mushroom cloud of destruction.

This wasn’t a simple show of strength, saber rattling or a test of machismo. Cuban-based missiles, in spitting distance of the US, posed a menacing Cold War threat to America.

JFK could not hide, stall, fudge or delay. He had to act. He did. And the US prevailed.

Everyday, I see business people struggling with, running from, dodging decisions that are hardly of momentous proportions. Should I fire a senior executive? Should we proceed with a marketing investment? Do we spend the money to update our IT infrastructure?

Time after time, these decisions are hung out to dry. They go unresolved because the so-called leader prefers to play it safe. And deciding not to decide appears to be the safe choice.

I say so-called leaders because with all of the volumes written on leadership, all of the courses taught on it, all of the rules and conventions ascribed to it, leadership boils down to a single trait: the ability to make decisions.

Yes, leaders must be aspirational. Yes, they must be courageous. Yes, they must lead the charge as opposed to watching from a safe haven. Yes. Yes. Yes.

But, they, we, cannot be aspirational, courageous or front line warriors, if we will not make decisions. Difficult, trying, challenging decisions that have all kinds of dangers and ramifications associated with them. Just as Kennedy dispatched the fleet, drawing a line in the water that the Soviets could not cross, all of us in business must ponder the decisions that come our way, reflect on them, envision the scenarios and then decide and ACT.

The truth is people want to follow people who have the guts to take the hard ones head on, support their decisions and then move on to the next hard choice that will cross their path.

Forget all of the complex schematics: management starts here.

Mark Stevens
CEO
MSCO | The Art and Science of Growing Businesses
www.MSCO.com
www.YourMarketingSucks.com

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