branded for life

Some brands succeed while many don’t. We’ve all heard the same old songs about the possible reasons behind failures. You know these song titles very well, from “The Right Employees Make The World Go Round” to “Financial Healing” and every other song on the Business Chart. But what about those businesses that are financially profitable yet they are internally culture-challenged in a way that’s reflecting on the customer experience? Would you say they are successful? What if success to them is only financial profit?

In early Japanese history, some time before the Edo period, society looked down at businesspeople and kept them at the bottom of the social hierarchy because they didn’t ‘make’ anything with their hands. All they did was to take someone’s work and sell it to another for profit. They were perceived as a soulless, low-class, socially-marginalized entity. Businesspeople were not as talented as artisans. They were not as noble as the glorified Samurai families and clans. They were not as appreciated as teachers. They were simply merchants.

Managers who can’t build a brand based on values and objectives other than just “Show Me The Money” will have a harder time to grow. Getting fixated on nothing but financial gain usually leads to lower quality, the wrong short cuts and mainly clouded judgments. Add to that less joy in running the business. Ultimately, they fail to become industry leaders and stop at being nothing more than merchants, miserable ’rich’ merchants.

The question is: if managers never felt like merchants, does that mean that they are not?

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