Companies have Salieri Moments Too

The work I've been doing all year has been exploratory in hopes of finding new, diversified revenue streams for my company (we're a prominent player online). We have a vision of something that hasn't quite been done exactly in this way online, a business plan, a product vision, product specs, the whole deal. A great deal of thought, and effort went into this. And my presentation bowled over the CEO, who was firmly behind it.

The comes strategic planning for 2009, involving the entire executive team. Each person with their own agenda, and a collective vision that we need to radically shift our company's agenda for the next year. That's all well and good, but the problem is that it means decreasing the overall size of our business and revenue. Which means that a new revenue stream is ALL the more important.

Collectively, the group took an alternate view: they need all their best people on crucial, mission-centric tasks. That means no new business verticals. That means no product that I've developed, envisioned and championed. That means... that really sucks.

From a rational perspective, I get it. We are sharpening our focus and anything that consumes resources outside the core objectives can be both a distraction and a headache. Yet, the investment was minimal. My time, time of a few others, a couple tech assists, and a modest outlay of money. Not a gigantic deal, truthfully. But they didn't see it that way.

The upside is this, however. There's a certain amount of flattery that the company wants "good" people on important projects, and apparently, one of the main considerations was, "Hey, we can have this guy - who really stepped up to the plate - building us something new, or we could have him playing a role on something that we view as short-term critical". So it's nice to be felt of that way, but at the same time, it's like being kicked in the gut. A couple of times. A year's worth of work pissed down the tubes before we even saw any return. 

Ironically, our corporate shift is due to a desire to put long-term company stability ahead of short-term revenues in the pecking order. Yet, the irony is that, again, we fall prey to short-term thinking rather than long-term vision. 

A Salieri moment. For all of us.