Lip Service

I've been consulting with a number of firms lately that are interested in appearing more (fast, interesting, innovative, lean...).  You get the picture.  There are a lot of new fads and many firms want the appearance of the new fad, without the pain and investment to become really new and different.  In my old days as a management consultant we had a phrase for this - "Putting lipstick on the pig".

Given the amount of information - news, blogs, financial results, etc - how does any firm think it will be able to get away with pantomiming a new capability rather than really investing?  Sure, there's a lot of work to change a company to become more hip, more lean, more customer responsive, but I'd much rather work for or buy from a firm that is attempting some important radical change to become something new and better than interact with firms that are all slogan and no delivery.  There's little wonder that many firms are considering going private.  The pressures from Wall Street to make the quarterly numbers have overwhelmed most management teams, to the point where everything else is subservient to the quarterly result.  As a private firm, the firm has greater ability to choose what's important to it and greater flexibility.

Alternatively, leaders of these firms need to have thicker skins and better communicate the value of a change to the market.  Yes, the stock price will take a hit.  Apple stock was rather inexpensive a few years ago before the iPod is released.  Will it require a dire situation in every company before they remake themselves to provide the products, services and business models people actually want?  Why is most management action taken in periods of desperation rather than the result of careful planning when the firm is "flush"?

Lip Service is the act of claiming to be something you are not.  A major oil and gasoline producers claiming to be environmentally friendly, versus BP's strong investment in alternative energy sources.  You know a commitment is underway when a firm changes its slogan from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum.  Lip Service is GM running an advertisement for a hydrogen vehicle with small print on the screen that informs you, if you can read it, that the car isn't available for sale!  Toyota and Honda are eating Detroit's lunch and we get "flex-fuel" vehicles and stage prop cars that aren't available on the market? 

I had a professor who had been in sales for IBM for many years who had a number of hackneyed sayings, but one of them holds true.  Say what you mean, and mean what you say, and you'll build trust with your customers.  Today, too many firms just give us Lip Service.