Categories: Articles

The Way We Talk About Business

How do you feel about yourself?

If I told you that we were going to evaluate you every quarter to see how you were performing, how would you feel? Some companies do reviews every six months, some do them once a year. Is the expectation that you will always be better reasonable to you? Pushing that further, what if I told you that every quarter you have to be better, be earning more money, be healthier and more? Better? Smarter? Healthier? Faster? Richer? How would you feel? For some, it would be motivating. For others it would be intimidating (count me in this camp). Regardless of how you might feel about this exercise, at what point in the process do you stop being able to continually be awesome? It has to happen, doesn’t it? Can you always – constantly and consistently – deliver against expectations (no matter how unreasonable).

The game of Wall Street is going to have to end.

No, I’m not moving away from capitalism… I’m just being a realist. Yesterday, I was reading a news item on Business Insider titled, Apple Just Announced Awful iPad Sales. My stomach sunk. How is this possible? The iPad had been outselling desktop computers since the launch of iPad 2, Amazon, Google, Samsung and others have been aggressive to enter the tablet market. Last week at the Consumer Electronics Association CEO Summit, many senior executives from Sony, Panasonic and VOXX expressed their bullish outlook for the tablet market. After three years of the iPad being in market, was it saturated? Are we done? Here’s what the article from Business Insider says:

"Apple just announced that it sold 14 million iPads during its fiscal fourth quarter. This is a massive disappointment. Two reasons:

Apple’s iPads business actually shrank q/q. 14 million iPads sold in Q4 is 3 million fewer than the 17 million Apple sold in Q4.
Apple missed analyst expectations. Until Tuesday, analysts were all predicting that Apple sold 17.5 million iPads during the quarter. Then, when Apple announced the iPad mini, it pre-announced some disappointing sales figures and analysts revised their numbers to 15 million. So Apple missed original expectations by 3.5 million, and pessimistic, revised expectations by 1 million."

How depressing…

Apple only sold fourteen million iPads in one quarter and that is three million less than Q4. On top of that, how dare they miss analysts expectations? Have we really come to the point in humanity that selling fourteen million of anything in one quarter with solid margins and profits is considered a "massive disappointment" and "awful"? What’s wrong with business today? The public market is pushing too hard for everything to be better, sell more and do more than it did last quarter. Does anyone really think that Apple is about to stall? That the tablet market is now mature? That any of Apple’s news is truly awful?

It’s not just Apple.

We need some Wall Street reform. Amazon was getting it too today. Their shares fell about five percent. They only had a net income of $63 million this quarter. I know what many investment bankers and financial advisors will say. They’ll tell us that this is the nature of business. It doesn’t have to be. With the economy being in the shape that it’s in, we would be well-advised to celebrate companies like Amazon and Apple and not punish them publicly. Amazon made a bad choice in investing in LivingSocial (which seems to be the brunt of the bad news in this instance). Elevating the business to a 30,000 foot view may be apropos.

It’s time to start re-thinking how we frame failure and success when it comes to business.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.