Devoted to Managers and those that seek to improve their management skills

For those of you who don't follow the world markets, we've had one of the biggest sell-offs worldwide in history. Everything, everywhere got hit.

In less than a month stock markets all over the world have plunged. India stocks were down 45%, the Russia fund is down 50%. Brazil dropped 30%. Gold fell $170, almost 20% off its high. Commodities got clobbered. Housing and real estate shares were almost cut in half. Mining companies dropped 25% and more in some cases.

What does this have to do with managing growth? We must understand who are customers are and build our businesses and departments deep, not only wide.

We don't want to build our businesses based upon the herd mentality. We don't want the herd plowing around with us for a while then going on to somewhere else leaving us with nothing other than a quick windfall.

Managing growth isn't only about pacing the rate of growth, but rather digging deep into our customers desires and needs and building the business around those people.

If we deal with the herd, we will always be commoditized. Consumers will buy based only upon price. This will never sustain you unless you're able to be the lowest price leader all the time. Unless you're Wal-Mart, you're not.

Mining our customers deep and providing products and services built upon that is the key to sustaining steady, solid growth. That is the challenge before management.

The bottom line is to not market primarily to draw the herd. Digging deep is going to be the practice of those that will succeed for years to come.