OK, well it is potentially the end of Blockbuster Inc. This morning Blockbuster filed for chapter 11 protection. It is a great example of the Risk of being the market leader. They owned the market, they were on top of the world. I am sure during their heyday money was being thrown all over the place.
I would love to hear these questions answered:
- When did they first realize that Blockbuster was in trouble?
- What did they do about it?
- What would they have done differently?
- When should they have acted?
- How much did ego get in the way?
The trap of leadership is that you often have to wait and see the result. You are often not allowed to change your business model until it is too late. If you change it when you probably need to and a loss occurs, then everyone loses their jobs. The analysts would quickly call out leadership saying that they lost market share because of the business model shift. Even it is was a great move that would ultimately save the company, our short term focus is entirely too great.
It is also difficult to understand the nature of the perceived threat. I am sure there were a couple of times when Management said “what do we do about NetFlix and the changes in the market?” I would guess that 10% market share did not scare anyone, nor 20%. Yet, at this point there was too much momentum.
As leaders, when do we act?
If we react too soon, we risk looking prone to panic. We can always explain it easier after the fact. Our egos, politics in general, and concern about saving face probably drive more decisions than anyone would ever want to admit.
All to often we push harder on marketing and sales to cover shortfalls in market share. I would be willing to bet that the company spent more time creating sales spiffs and getting creative in terms of finances, than investing in new business models. What this leads to is a further entrenchment into the business model, a “we can weather this storm” mentality.
I wonder what would have happened if they would have set hard targets in terms of driving action. What if they would have said “once our market share slips by 10%, I want a meeting where we come up with 5 new business models”. We are just not trained to think about creating very specific action.
We ponder and delay (then get out and let someone else handle the mess).
PureStone Partners LLC 
Interesting how history repeats itself–and too often we forget what we learned in school. I remember in one of my MBA classes the professor saying how GM executives said in the early 1970’s, “We’ll give the Japanese 3% of the market, and that’s it.” We all know how that turned out. GM didn’t change their business, their customer focus, or the types of cars they were turning out, and it ended (eventually) in bankruptcy. Lesson learned: if your competitor is gaining market share due to a change in the market environment (i.e., their market is growing and yours isn’t), you need to seriously rethink what you are doing and how you are doing it, or else you’ll be just another bankruptcy filing.