OpEd: Reflection: " Work your plan and Plan your Work"----and other funny sayings

There was a saying back in around 1980 that for small business, the secret was to "Plan your work, and Work your Plan." It was the real mantra for everybody.

Don Sheehan, Award Winning Dale Carnegie Sales Trainer shocked me one Saturday morning in a seminar when he spoke to about 25 busness owners who were facing the severe recession of 1982-----He said there was a new rule-----"If the plan is not working---change it. Following in the old rut is a prescription to failure."

One of the essential premises of the current "bailout" mentality for the banks, is that the essence of the system is ok, and that we just need another layer of debt for not the kids, but the grandkids and great-grandkids to pay off.

One specific industry that is facing this dilema is the news industry. Newspapers have not in general adopted or have found the winning balance between digital and print for advertising---and there have been some stunning misteps----As Don Sheehan suggested, there must be an essential reshaping of the way things are done in order to survive---and those who are facing their demise are not able to make the necessary changes.

Say in banking---community banks in America are trying to meet their customer---they simply have to since they are local. Big banks feel no such imperative---and most it seems to me have made the decison that they will take the bailout money and use it to buy other banks so that they can get bigger, and thus even more insulated from failure, since the Fed will bail out only the biggest. This formula simply cannot work. It you think it can explain how it can work.

Don Sheehan was right. "Work your plan and plan your Work" is just an idiotic saying in a time of crisis---the key is to have the courage to find a plan that works and make the necessary changes.