Why do bad things happen to smart leaders?

✍ Scribed by Jack Trout

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2011
• Weight: 105 KB
• Volume: 2011
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1087-8149
• DOI: 10.1002/ltl.473

✦ Synopsis

C o m P a n Y b usiness and nonprofit leaders are overeducated. Never have I seen so much advice offered to executives about how to do things right. there are hundreds of management books and more than 2,000 titles in marketing alone.

So why are we having such difficult economic times? Why did detroit almost drive off a cliff? Why did the banks need bailing out? Why are some corporate legends-Kodak, Nokia, Yahoo, Johnson & Johnson, Sears, Budweiser, even General electric-having problems? Sure, you can point to the dramatic increase in global competition that makes mistakes so costly. But there are books about how to deal with competition (I even wrote one of them, Marketing Warfare). one can only say, "Leaders make mistakes."

While there are a few shining examples of brilliant leadership, there aren't enough.

If you study this paradox, the best you can do is categorize the most popular mistakes. So rather than get into the psychology of denial or a study of the whys, it makes more sense to lay out the traps that keep leaders from doing the right thing, despite all this advice. avoid these mistakes and bad things won't happen.