“Be careful little eyes what you see, It’s the second glance that ties your hands
As darkness pulls the strings
Be careful little feet where you go, for it’s the little feet behind you that are sure to follow
It’s a slow fade when you give yourself away
It’s a slow fade when black and white are turned to gray
And thoughts invade, choices are made, a price will be paid
When you give yourself away
People never crumble in a day
It’s a slow fade.”
– Lyric from “Slow Fade” by Casting Crowns
“Professor Jay Lorsch makes the great point in an analysis of the decline of Sears that “gradual crises are often much more dangerous than sudden crises. When a sudden jolt occurs, firms often mobilize resources and attack the problem with a sense of urgency. However, when a decline occurs over many years, beginning with small decreases in performance, managers often find ways to rationalize the diminishing results. Denial sets in during these crises that unfold over lengthy periods of time. Sears seems the perfect example of what Lorsch calls gradual crises.””
– From an unattributed blog post a colleague recently shared with me
When we find ourselves in any kind of crisis, it’s easy to believe (or convince ourselves) that it happened overnight. “Wow, when the market crashed in 2008, it was like a shot out of left field,” people say. Except it wasn’t like a shot out of left field. Read the book or see the movie The Big Short. It’s the little feet behind that are sure to follow, and any time there’s blood in the water / easy money lying around, feet of all sizes tend to swim or sprint toward it. When we say or feel, “I never saw THAT coming,” it is more about our rationalization and denial of prior facts that result in that 2 x 4 to the head that we actually swing at ourselves, a little bit each day. So, if we never saw that coming — shame on us.
Sears, in Jay Lorsch’s perspective above, is a great example of a business slow fade. The nature of our political landscape and the general social media vitriol spewing everywhere are great examples of the decline of personal accountability — a slow fade that starts with us (one at a time) and spreads. And since businesses are still made up of people, these two kinds of slow fade are directly linked to one another, not just in cause and effect, but it giving us clear signs that we’re beginning to slip. So, will we look for those signs?
The Casting Crowns lyric is so excellent for considering matters of Faith, Family or Finance / Business.
“…when black and white are turned to gray and thoughts invade, choices are made and a price will be paid.” Yikes. Y-I-K-E-S!
Sales are slow…..let’s lower the price! Customer retention is flagging…let’s wave a month of fees! Employee morale is really down…let’s have a party!
Masking the symptoms of an illness or a problem can provide short-term “relief,” but it’s a slow fade, destructively giving us time to rationalize the diminishing results, to lapse in to denial, and ultimately, “crumble in a day.”
Leave a Reply