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

Last post we talked about how the "Dow Jones Acquisition Underscores Newspapers-Media are First a Business." It made me realize that this is also the case in all businesses we run or manage.

What made me have to write this post is the one-sided comment that many make to encourage people in their business endeavors, and that is to love and have a passion for what you do; to make a business a cause rather than simply an operation.

While I don't necessarily disagree with that thought, it does bring up the same problem we talked about with the newspaper business, in that journalists and them running the business have come to forget that they're a business first and a influencer second.

This is one of the reasons the newspaper industry has been in such disarray. It's not just the Internet that has caused this, but the idea that they represent some type of lofty position others don't. This type of prideful thinking made them think they were immune to market forces.

The point is we must know whatever we do in business it is first a business. The equivalent of being "editorially independent" doesn't pay the bills.

Be careful of becoming a cause or loving what you do, if it leads you to forget that from the beginning to the end: you're a business.

When businesses expand into new areas, I've seen potential hires tell the recruiters how much they love the field they represent. Hearing this before, they wisely tell the people it's those that know how to move merchandise they want in the business, not those that love to hang around the merchandise.

Of course the best of both worlds is to have someone that really enjoys the product but lives to get others to enjoy it as much. In other words their love of it translates to sales.

I think we're coming to a crisis time in business as people with agendas and hidden motives continue to pressure businesses to save the world, etc.

Those who get their eyes off running their business successfully to anything else, will find they won't be able to save the business, let alone some cause in the world.