Is priority one

[Hello]

Every entrepreneur and small business owner knows the rule: learn to do one thing right on an ongoing basis and better than the competition. If you can’t do that one thing, you won’t survive to do another. I know that’s easier said than done, but that doesn’t change the fact that your success depends on it.

Every time I see a manager, company, or business fail to do their primary function right, I wonder how they got to be where they are. Here are some real-world examples to illustrate the point:

The captain of a commuter plane that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y. in February - killing 50 people - had flunked numerous flight tests and was never adequately trained to respond to the stall prevention warning system, according to the Wall Street Journal. The one thing an airline needs to do right is get passengers safely from one place to another. I’m not saying that’s easy, but I’m pretty sure it includes having qualified and adequately trained pilots.

Years ago I took the reins at a technology startup company. Prototype development had stalled and the VCs couldn’t understand what was wrong. It turns out that marketing had specified a product that was once hot, but the market window had evaporated and the engineers were revolting.

At a midsized public company the opposite occurred. The engineers were designing and building what they wanted to sell, not what customers wanted to buy. They thought the customers were all idiots. Where was marketing while all this was going on? How about the CEO or the board of directors?

Isn’t a company’s primary function to provide a product or service that customers want?

My advice for managers, marketers, entrepreneurs, and business owners: figure out what the most important thing you should be doing is and never forget that doing that one thing, and doing it right on an ongoing basis, is priority one. Your success depends on it.

Good Luck.

Salam

[ForOneSucks]

Very well put, nice.