Business Leaders Committing Suicide

I think we know by now that one of the biggest obstacles to an economic recovery is an off-the-cliff fall in consumer spending.  This is leading to lack of investment in new plants, equipment, research and development, exporting or any other growth producing activity.  Of course as more people lose jobs the more the fear contagion spreads so the more consumption and investment shrinks and the more jobs are lost.

All I hear and see from business leaders is hand-wringing panic.  By now we hear from idiot economists who didn’t foresee the sustainable bubble bursting that the world wide global economy is being “reset” at a lower level.  Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, recently said while he announced the layoffs of 5000 smart productive employees that his economic analysts don’t see a recovery in demand for personal computers for many years, if ever.  Meanwhile Microsoft made $4.17 billion in profits, which is enough to pay the people laid off for a decade even if they did no productive work.  What Ballmer did, of course, is what business leaders are doing all over the world.  He made sure the 5000 people he just fired and the millions that watched him do it would be too scared to buy a new computer or upgrade their software to Windows 7.

Yes, we are seeing the rotten cycle of short-term, me-only leadership.   Most CEOs today earn bonuses based on stock price increase based on maintaining high-as-possible short-term profits.  The easiest way to do that is cut expenses.  And the big expense target is always the same…employees and now product development.  What’s insane is that this kind of myopic leadership accelerates the decline in consumption and insures that few exciting or improved products or services will be developed.

The problem is our business leaders literally don’t know how to think differently.  They behave like sheep in a panic stampede.  Now is the time for leaders to lower the cost and time for consumers to buy their product by removing waste and all non-valued features.  Now is the time to invest in new solutions to the problems we face or the joys we desire.  Now is the time to remove the dysfunctional or obnoxious aspects of our workplaces.  Now is the time to dream of ways of creating sustainable abundance and attack the worldwide market with better ideas.  Most of all, now is the time for business leaders to step up to their social responsibility to creatively employ their workforce in producing value.

The needs of the world have not changed.  In fact they are growing.  The only reason leaders of profitable business are laying off people is that they are scared to think differently.  They are scared to lead.  They need to get out of the way and let someone with courage and imagination lead.  Next time a leader of a profitable enterprise layoffs hard working, value producing employees, he (or she) ought to lay himself off.

Oh yes, I am off to Washington D.C.  I am trying to get a certain Senator to support the 1% Percent Solution.  Let’s create jobs by unleashing our entrepreneurial energy toward socially strategic enterprise.