There are a lot of books written about business, around about 4000 a year apparently.  Nearly all of them are about how to be successful in business, though there are a few war stories about how not to do it, usually on a spectacular scale (I look forward to the post-mortems on GM and Chrysler).

But there aren't many books on the "average business", which, let's face it, covers most of us.  Most of us aren't growing like a young Google, and we aren't at the receivers' door either.

Accrding to an analysis at Sloan Management School, the average company suffers from a combination of myopia and inertia.  The article then goes on to talk about IPNs - Industry Peer Networks.  Didn't know they were called that, did you?

I was struck by the comment about inertia and myopia.  They were referring to business owners having a strictly local focus and that they tend not to start new things, but I think there's more to it than that.

Here's how I see myopia and inertia play out.  Myopia means short-sighted, so my focus is on my active customers, my staff, my geographic market  and my immediate competitors.  The stuff in the hazy background includes things like a world in the grip of a deep recession, rising unemployment and a possible shift in consumer/customer preferences.  I haven't yet established the connection between the background and the foreground except that the recession is slowing business.

My myopia also plays out in terms of time horizon.  It's not true that my long term planning horizon extends only to what I'll have for lunch.  I'll have a vague idea about what I would like to achieve this year, and I'll be very clear about what I've got to do today.  It starts to get fuzzy when the timeframe moves beyond a week.  In terms of vision for the business, see the vague idea.  The usual one of "staying in business" has taken on heightened urgency this year, but it seldom got more detailed than that even in the boom.

My inertia is not because I don't have ideas. It's just that they never get off the ground.  They get out of the terminal and even get to taxi along the runway, but then...  Well, you know how it is.  We're busy doing the day to day.  We don't have resources to invest at the moment, and we can probably get by without it and maybe this is not such a good time etc etc.

Sometimes the ideas do get off the ground, but they tend to be a solo effort which disappears into the wild blue yonder like Amelia Earhart.  Ever heard the phrase "It as such a good idea I never did it again"?

Business owners obey the laws of physics: it takes a lot of energy to move something from rest.  That's why it's so hard to start something new.  It takes relatively little energy to keep it going once it's achieved velocity, and quite a lot to stop it. That's why we keep doing stuff that doesn't work as well as it used to or as well as something else would work.

The flip side of course is that to be a lot better than average, we need to have a vision and we need to create momentum.  Where are you going, and at what speed?

Dr Mike Ashby