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General Colin Powell's Failure as Secretary of State Provides Valuable Lessons for Business OwnersTip! Talk to anyone that has been deeply and personally involved in a real business failure, and they will likely tell you that things became very clear near the end. There is nothing like winding down a business after catastrophic failure to help you step back and really understand the big picture with remarkable clarity. As I read "Soldier - The Life of Colin Powell" by Karen DeYoung, I concluded that there were many lessons we business owners could learn from Colin Powell's work as Secretary of State Lesson One: To succeed in any business - economic, academia, military, or political - you have to know yourself. You have to know what you like to do and what you are good at. If you find an opportunity you like, you will become better at it and ultimately really good at it. I think Colin Powell didn't know himself or, if he did, he wouldn't admit his strengths and weaknesses. This was probably his biggest problem. First, his education and choice of service branch placed him at a severe disadvantage. The Army, in the sixties, did not produce the "best and the brightest" and CCNY and ROTC did not equal the Military Academies or even the Officers Training Schools. There is no mention of his participation in competitive sports at any point in his life and he certainly did not bring the overwhelming desire to "win," magnified by sports, to any position he was given. The sports experience and success (if any) is one measure many use in evaluating an individual. Rumsfeld, as an All-American wrestler at Princeton, must have tested Powell early and found him easy to defeat. Cheney, having been Secretary of Defense when Powell was Chairman, may well have compared Powell's education and training with what he had seen in others including the top executives he had employed while running a Fortune 500 company and found the General wanting.
Second, his ratio of time at a desk with time in the field was inverse (by a large margin) to what is normally required to achieve the rank of Four Star General. In addition, he had not been a commander with full responsibility and authority. Third, while he may have been good at judging people who reported to him, he was lousy at judging Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and the President. In the book there is even an example of how he misjudged his commanding officer at a post. Said officer (whom Powell thought he was serving well) gave Powell a bad report, sufficiently bad to derail his promotion progress so that Powell thought of retiring. Everyone should focus on what they like and do well, and they should know how they stack up against those they will have to work with and for - as well as how they got to where they are. Lesson Two: To be successful everyone must do a thorough analysis of what he or she is getting into. In business it's called due diligence. The business owner has to do this prior to making any decision of consequence. Powell's most glaring error was his speech at the UN. The error was the result of a failure to perform sufficient due diligence with regard to the sources of the "facts" behind the presence of WMD. Tip! The third business failure factor profiled in the report, and a critical one, was Marketing. Over 64% of the businesses surveyed in the Marketing category failed because of owners minimizing the importance of properly promoting their business followed by ignoring their competition. Lesson Three: Successful businesses operate with business plans, projections and budgets. They also measure results against the plans so they know when, where, and how to make changes. Any plan Powell would have made would have been doomed because he misunderstood the task. He decided to function as an advisor to the President (perhaps influenced by the Commander-in-Chief title he respected for his entire life) rather than as CEO of his "business", the State Department. As a businessman, I would have defined success as convincing the President to do what I thought was right which would have elevated the State Department's stature thus getting more business for the business. There was no mention of any definition of success or what his plan was to achieve it. Tip! An analysis of the reasons for business failure suggests that over 60% of all business failure is due to poor management practices. Powell also didn't reflect on how the overwhelming resources he deployed as Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff during the First Gulf War was what made him successful. He never expressed whether or not he could have replicated such resources in his new "business." And, if he couldn't get the resources, he should have considered what new tactics he would use to manage his "business" to success. A business owner has to predict and measure results so as to decide what is needed and how to make changes when the results are not achieving the objectives. Lesson Four: He also failed at paying attention to the basic business elements. First, he didn't market his proposals to the President. Powell gained no third party support and he just left the proposals on the table hoping that the President would recognize that he was "right." In business this would be analogous to watching the phone waiting for it to ring. We all know you can't "sell" what you haven't marketed. Tip! A complete business plan helps you get financing and includes a marketing plan, which addresses lack of marketing and insufficient financing, two more often cited reasons for small business failure. And he didn't support his people. When they told him how Cheney and Rumsfeld were undermining the State Department's efforts, thereby setting their business up to fail, he didn't take action. Every business owner has to pay attention to the basics. Lesson Five: As a business owner, you have to change strategies when something isn't working. He should have realized that playing the "good soldier" wasn't going to make him or his business successful. When he realized he couldn't change the rules Cheney and Rumsfeld had set up, Powell had to innovate and figure a way to beat them at their own game. He needed to manipulate, cry "foul", change the playing field, and take whatever action was necessary to convince the President he was right. If the competition is offering no interest for 60 months - you better seriously consider doing the same, otherwise you will lose. Tip! Many business writers. business consultants and business coaches attribute business failure to a lack of strategic planning, a lack of leadership, a lack of vision, a lack of processes, the list is endless. And finally, when he realized that he couldn't convince the President to act as the State Department thought best, he should have taken himself out of the game. When the liabilities exceed the assets and there is no more capital available - and the man in charge won't change the strategy, it's time to fire the man in charge. If Powell couldn't get the President to see that the State Department's recommendations were correct, he should have preserved its position, not continue to squander its status. Business Free Terminals,Check readers, Gift Cards, 24 hour Deposit. Apply Now! It was time to cut the businesses' losses so it would have a chance to start over under new, better leadership. Art Consoli held eight corporate positions with Johnson & Johnson before starting his first business. He went on to build over twenty businesses from patents or ideas or from businesses others couldn't make successful. These ranged from starting a veterinarian drug company to taking over a steel fabricating company to developing the first manufactured home subdivision to qualify for every private and government assisted mortgage program in Arizona. He also did ten workouts for lenders and owners; the last was a $30 million, 300 employee, precision parts manufacturing plant that made parts for the auto industry. Consoli's unique background and skills allow him to speak and write about how someone with limited experience can do a self-evaluation which will let him decide which business opportunity is best, how to evaluate opportunities and gain control over the one which offers the greatest potential and then manage that business to success. Readers of his book call and write to tell him how much his book has helped their lives and improved their business. - www.ProWealthMentors.comRevolutionary Automated Marketing System. Multiple Income Streams. |
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