By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
While in flight today I had the opportunity to read an interview in “Fortune” with Home Depot’s CFO, Carol Tome. As a prelude to the interview, Home Depot’s CEO, Frank Blake proudly stated that he had placed Tome in charge of the company’s growth initiatives, at which time I sighed and said a silent prayer for Home Depot as it must surely be on its death bed to place a CFO in charge of growth. While there are certainly exceptions to every rule, placing a CFO in charge of corporate growth is like placing the drug addict in charge of inventory control in the pharmacy…it’s just not good business, and it won’t work.
Innovate or Perish is a battle cry that I have long espoused to my clients. I can’t think of a better example of what can happen to those companies that fail to innovate than the rumors circulating about the Tribune Co. The Tribune Co., owner of the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other once revered trophy brands is hemorrhaging under the burden of huge debt obligations, insufficient cash flow, and is rumored to be filing for bankruptcy as early as this week. The emergence of better alternative news sources has been hurting the newspaper industry for years now, but when you combine the rapid emergence of new media options with the crushing blow of the recession, it may just be too much for an old media lagger to survive…
