Corporate Bravery - Fearful Business Examples

We have been on hiatus for a few weeks while we launched our book - Corporate Bravery (now available on Amazon and iTunes). But we are back and this week we feature a few recent examples of fearful management.

1. First we begin with the slow death of Google+, although many will be quick to point out that Google+ hasn't been killed (yet), as documented by a Mashable article entitled "Inside the Failure of Google+"

I also want to point out that Google is typically a brave company (coming in at #2 on the Brave Rankings) but this was a clear example of a fearful manager talking a brave leader into a fearful decision.

I'm not going to ruin much about the article for you but this quote stood out to me and highlights the fear-based decision making that led to the birth of Google+:

"Vic was just this constant bug in Larry's ear: 'Facebook is going to kill us. Facebook is going to kill us,'" says a former Google executive. "I am pretty sure Vic managed to frighten Larry into action. And voila: Google+ was born."

2. There is a very cool example from Popular Science about ants and the biological example of how conservatism (often based out of fear) can keep organizations from meeting its full potential 

The article chronicles studies of ants and how they cooperate together to carry larger pieces of food for long (relative to the spatial sizes of ants) distances. It was partially due to the ants conformist mentality, but there was much to be learned about their group leadership and efficiency. Specifically, the group think of the group required that individual leader ants from outside the group get involved to re-direct them to the best, direct path until they lost track and then another leader ant would join the pack. The conclusion of scientists? In effect, says Feinerman, the larger groups were collectively too conservative, which prevented them from completing the task." Read the whole report, there is a very cool video of the scene to kill some time as well.

Google's Innovation

Time Magazine this week featured Google's innovation machine and what Google refers to as "moonshots" or innovation that is 10x greater than anything else in the marketplace.

Another key feature of brave companies or corporate leaders who know the face of bravery are those with a long-term perspective.  They understand that enduring companies are built over long periods of time and not quarter to quarter succumbing to investor pressure.

The article had a great quote about Google's view on innovation.  Many companies are more focused on how to incrementally improve on their core products to protect it against competition.  What ends up happening is a myopic view of innovation that prevents companies from making real breakthroughs.  Google's moonshot approach can be summed up in one quote:

"Guys like Larry (Page) don't focus on preserving value; they just work on building new value."

That sounds fine when you have tens of billions of dollars to spend on innovation and create many expensive flops but that can't work for all companies.  But the mindset is an important one and practically, even Google takes a rational approach - they don't just throw billions of dollars at a given category:

"Page has also concentrated on avoiding flops like Wikipedia knockoff Knol and Google Buzz, a Twitter clone almost nobody wanted to use.  He has done this in part by ratcheting down the number of new product introductions and axing existing projects in period 'spring cleanings'.  He has in a memorable phrase, declared his intention to put 'more wood behind fewer arrows'."