There is no one-thing

Especially when times get tough, companies, organizations and individuals, in their effort to turn things around quickly, will often look for the one-dramatic-thing they can do to make life better. Unfortunately, because they become so myopic by virtue of concentrating the majority of their resources on the one-thing, they do not spend much time or energy on the many things that attributed to their success in the first place.

Successful businesses and individuals made their success by doing many things well. Therefore when things get tough, it defies logic to begin the search for the one-thing that will reverse the slide. It is just not that simple. Unfortunately many companies and businesses do look for and find one-thing that they think will make the difference and then push hard and fast in implementing and executing based on their belief that if they do the one-thing well, all will turn out well.

In his book, How The Mighty Fall, author Jim Collins uses research to chronicle the fall of some industry giants. Most of the failures were self-inflicted and many of the companies that did fail, were guilty of looking for, and finding, that one-thing, that they just knew would serve as the fulcrum to tip the scales back in their favor. They did not find such a thing because it does not exists.

What happened is, they stopped doing the many things that made them successful, or they did not adjust to the changing business environment quickly enough and after they realized it, it was too late. They had invested untold fortunes and human resources in the one-thing, only to discover that if they had begun to look at everything, they could have corrected course by making several improvements and probably survived and maybe thrived.