Your Business … Does It Still Make Sense?

It was a perfect crisp 67 degree spring morning.  The sun was shining and the backdrop to the towering city skyscrapers was a bright blue cloudless sky. It was an unusually quite NYC morning with no taxi’s honking or fire engine sirens.  I was walking across east 35th Street when I overheard two construction workers talking very loudly to each other.  One of the guys said to his co-worker “nothing makes any sense, they send all of us guys from Long Island to Jersey and the guys from Jersey to New York to do the work, why don’t they just send us New York guys to do the New York sh!t and let the Jersey guys handle the Jersey work.”

When I was half way down the block I said to myself this make perfect sense!  When a business starts out it either fills a void or satisfies a need.  Initially it provides great services, manufactures or sells products.  It starts out making complete logical sense. As the business grows and grows it no longer makes any sense.  The business may still exist, but its existence is like a bad relationship.  Something went terribly wrong, but it’s the habit of normal and acceptable which has kept them in business.

Look at food giant Dole selling fruit cups filled with fruit and high fructose corn syrup.  Dole started out with an idea of selling fresh fruit and now it has morphed into something that doesn’t make sense.  Large public corporations are under such scrutiny that their bottom line to their shareholders is paramount over the products they sell.  Prior to these companies going public their business objectives were very different.

Think about the evolution of a bank.  “The First Bank was a bank chartered by the United States Congress on February 25, 1791. The charter was set for a 20-year expiration date. The Bank was created to handle the financial needs and requirements of the central government of the newly formed United States, which had previously been thirteen individual states with their own banks, currencies, financial institutions, and policies.”  Wikipedia described the creation of a bank, but today banks are more focused on their balance sheets then lending money.

When I watch television or read about companies in a newspaper or a magazine I ask myself why am I buying their product? I want to make sure that I am buying something because it makes sense not out of habit.