Have we in the United States lost our edge?

I know of one company that was making short-term decisions with negative long-term consequences in preparation for a sale about the time the bottom fell out of the market in 2008. When they weren’t purchased, they spent the subsequent years trying to course correct because those short-term moves were hampering their ability to maintain a happy customer base and sustain growth.

As a teenager driving my dad’s delivery truck, it was ingrained in my mind that my job was to make sure our customers had the best experience I could deliver — even though my job was limited to packaging and delivering our merchandise. I was responsible to make sure the truck was clean, my appearance was presentable, and everything was delivered on time. My dad would often say, “Ty, for many of our customers, you are the only representative from our company our customers will see on a regular basis.”

Denning asks, “Why do business leaders focus on the stock price and the short-term with such disastrous consequences for management, innovation and competitiveness? Where does this thinking come from?”

I’m afraid it’s exactly what we’ve trained them to do.

As a Main Street business evangelist and marketing veteran with more than 25 years in the trenches, Ty Kiisel writes about leading people and small-business issues for Lendio (lendio.com).