Deadliest Business Disease - 3 Ways It Can Kill

It's easy for a business to go beyond the boundaries of its main market and get excited about branching out into these new opportunities. While these opportunities are enticing the business must stay true to its focus and continue to mine the gold contained in its core product/offering.

You need look only at a couple of examples from history to know this is true.

The Roman Empire was perhaps the greatest organization ever. It's only really rivaled by Alexander the Great's empire and perhaps the Persian Empire. One of the big things that brought the Roman empire down was a disease from within.

There were many outside that factors like a communicable disease which wiped out 25% of the population, a seemingly endless line of poor emperor leaders, civil war, and an ever widening chasm between the rich and the poor which was 10 times greater than what we see today.

In addition, there were always lots of cults and pagan religions the Romans were tolerant of. Then Christianity started to come to the forefront in the third and fourth centuries A.D. and caused a crisis of identity in the Roman Empire.

This Crisis of identity sent people searching for religion and faith and caused them to question the benefits of the Roman empire and its rule. This was probably the most damaging thing that led to the end of the Empire.

This identity crisis was the silent internal killer which brought down the empire.

So you need to maintain the culture of your business and its identity. Everyone working in your business needs to believe in the identity and what the business is doing to bring value to your marketplace.

When that starts to come into question it is the beginning of the end for your business. IBM had a huge crisis of identity 30 to 40 years ago but they were able to remake themselves and adapt to the marketplace thus saving their business.

Plan for your growth and maintain the strength of your identity. Don't let your business get to the point of IBM where it needs saving. It's easy to take a look at and learn from the mistakes of history that brought some of the greatest organizations down.

People, including your business employees and partners and suppliers, all need something to believe in a higher purpose to strive for. Religious organizations know this and are good at it.

It's time for you to put this concept into practice in your business.

Keep organizational identity strong and clear and so will your business be.