More Bad Business Decisions
Neatorama has an article on business blunders, which is pretty much a different take on a list from Forbes I posted a few weeks ago. The bad decisions are all examples of short-term thinking. Take, for example, the story of Schlitz, formerly the number one beer in the U.S.
[Schlitz President Robert] Uihlein cut the amount of time it took to brew Schlitz from 40 days to 15, and replaced much of the barley malt in the beer with corn syrup - which was cheaper. He also switched from one type of foam stabilizer to another to get around new labeling laws that would have required the original stabilizer to be disclosed on the label.
The results were predictable - the new beer tasted terrible and people quickly stopped drinking it. By the time the issue had been remedied, Schlitz had started its slide to obscurity.
Tags: Business, Long Term Thinking
April 15th, 2008