Every elevator has weight limits for safety reasons. Let us assume people are in the queue for waiting an elevator and they are getting it one by one. Once the bell rings because of over capacity, most people think it is the fault of the lastly entered person who leads the limit. But it is not only his or her fault because the total weight of people reaches the limit by all people who are in the elevator, not by one person who enters lastly or who has heaviest weight.
1.1 Management Case 1
In 2011, Hewlett-Packard discontinued its TouchPad tablet and WebOS business to focus its efforts on enterprise systems. In 2013, Microsoft announced its intent to acquire the mobile hardware division of Nokia in a deal worth more than 5 billion euros including the patents. In 2016, Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO, decided to sell the core business of Yahoo after 4 years of her joining. Once big firms are falling, many people (so called analysts or consultants) bring up the reasons why the companies fail their business. In case of the above examples, the analysts have brought ten failing reasons for HP (Reisinger, 2011), five reasons for Nokia (Chang, 2012) and seven reasons for failing leadership in Yahoo (Wagner, 2016).
1.2 Management Case 2
Many best-seller books for self-help claim that some (seven or eight) critical points could make people to be successful (John, 2010) or highly effective (Covey, 1989). Tesla Motor also debuted in 2008 by launching the first full electronic sport car Tesla Roadster and the Model S which was an electric luxury sedan in 2012. The company becomes one of most attractive high-tech companies in the world and, again, analysts are bring up some reasons (less than 10) why the company is succeed (Ciaccia, 2014). In 2012, K-pop song, Gangnam Style, became a global hit and many analysts brought the several reasons what it was succeed (Hollis, 2012; TheDrum, 2012; Socialmaximizer, 2012).
As you might know, the first case is about failing stories and the second case is about the success stories. Ironically, the insights from the elevator situation could be applied into both management cases in the same approach. When a big company fails or a small company becomes a big company, many people want to know the reasons why it happens. Many analysts believe that some critical reasons make a company fail and most people believes same way. Practically speaking, it is not true. Of course, some reasons might be more vital than others but these critical reasons are just like the person who enter lastly or the person who is heaviest. You might point out who is the last person to enter or find who is heaviest in the elevator. But it is not worthy to solve the problem. This idea is seemly applicable for success stories. If your company knows the seven reasons what Tesla become successful (Ciaccia, 2014), you would not be successful like Tesla by completing only seven reasons. The failure (or success) factors are more complicated than just couple of reasons but most people want to hear only highlights, just like picking the last person to leave in the elevator.
If you are running the business and want to adopt the reasons for success of other companies (or void the reasons for failure), these types of analysis reports from consultants might not be worthy because the success of companies would not be happened just couple of reasons. Bring up the couple of reasons for success (or failure) does not make your company succeed (or fail).
Chang, A. (2012), 5 Reasons Why Nokia Lost Its Handset Sales Lead and Got Downgraded to 'Junk', Wired, retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2012/04/5-reasons-why-nokia-lost-its-handset-sales-lead-and-got-downgraded-to-junk/
Ciaccia, C. (2014), Why Tesla Has Been So Successful When Other Clean Energy Companies Have Failed, The Street, retrieved from https://www.thestreet.com/story/12903918/1/why-tesla-has-been-so-successful-when-other-clean-energy-companies-have-failed.html
Covey, S. R. (1989), The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Free Press, New York, NY.
Hollis, N. (2012), 10 reasons why Gangnam Style became a global hit, Kantar Millward Brown, retrieved http://www.millwardbrown.com/global-navigation/blogs/post/mb-blog/2012/11/21/10-reasons-why-Gangnam-Style-became-a-global-hit.aspx
John, S. J. (2010), The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common: 8 to Be Great, 2nd Ed., Train of Thought Art Inc., Toronto, ON, Canada.
Reisinger, D. (2011), 10 Reasons Why HP Failed in the Mobile Business, eWeek, retrieved from http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/How-HP-Failed-In-the-Mobile-Business-10-Reasons-Why-245170
Socialmaximizer (2012), Why Gangnam Style Became So Popular - The Reasons Behind Its' Horse-Riding Success!, retrieved from http://blog.socialmaximizer.com/why-gangnam-style-became-so-popular/
TheDrum (2012), Case Study: How Gangnam Style went viral with a strategic marketing campaign from YG Entertainment, retrieved from http://www.thedrum.com/news/2012/10/30/case-study-how-gangnam-style-went-viral-campaign-yg-entertainment
Wagner, R. (2016), The Seven Lessons Of Marissa Mayer's Loss Of Command At Yahoo, retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/roddwagner/2016/03/08/the-seven-lessons-of-marissa-mayers-loss-of-command-at-yahoo/#73b6fd5836c3
