The Litany Level

So I'm going to tell a story now about a particular company. It's a very large company. It serves as an analogy, a metaphor for what we're going to be exploring. But this big company has been around for a very long time, but they are in a particularly tough situation at the moment. Their name is Techno Titan. They're in the enterprise development space, and what they're seeing when they look at their figures and data and statistics Take no Titan. Believe that they are titans, but they have just had the worst quarter in 15 years. Their revenue is down $2 billion year on year. I mean, that's huge. Their customer churn rate is up to 15%. Their employee turnover is at 25%, which there's no stability, and that's double the industry average. Their customer acquisition cost is up 78%. And when they turn to the headlines, Techno Titan, the end of an era, a giant's fall, and that is what they're facing. So what they do is they get their leadership together and they start brainstorming ideas. How do we respond to this? The first thing they do to make sure that there's a bit of cash flow is they cancel all training and they cut the marketing budget. And everybody in training and marketing always complains that that is the first thing that a company does when they're in trouble. And then the leadership book a really expensive retreat for the board so they can sit there and contemplate and update their vision statement. And while that is a little cynical, it is actually a little bit true. The very first thing a company does, an organization does, is to reduce expenses, increase sales, and get their people to work harder. And if that doesn't work, then it's also very likely that the leadership will turn to blaming other situations for their problems. They can blame COVID, the economy, the next generation, politics, anything that detracts from the fact that it is their responsibility that something has gone wrong with the company and they've not been able to address it.