The whining trap

Whining is commonly attached to coffee table discussion where otherwise smart and capable people (or less) complain about everything but especially about bad management and personal responsibilities. Personally I have always just left the table when this occurs - I have noticed that my opinion "do something about it or leave the company... no one forces you to be here" is not that popular among these clubs. These coffee tables are dangerous because members fall into whining trap.

Bigger problem is when whole country starts to whine or people in bigger power start to whine. Normally this happens at times of recession. Then I cannot leave the table... I need to leave the whole country or just shut down my all media accesses. Especially stock listed companies start to whine "market is so difficult that we had to ..." These same companies are bragging in high growth periods "superior strategy guaranteed our success..." If this were true then there would exist only superior strategies & executions and bad timings.

Riding the wave of recession and acceleration the wave with whining these companies can focus on internal cost cutting and other internal development - we need to improve our profitability. Personally I would invest more to focused sales activities and change sales management - in high growth every sales manager can excel but in recession you need high caliber professionals. Another fashionable trend is to shut down all marketing communications - we cannot afford to market and we have no proof points of its effectiveness. Well if this were true why companies market in growth periods if it has no impact. Companies have fell into whining trap.

For some reason all of us fall into whining trap - it is the easiest escape route from taking personal blame. CEO's can blame the market when actually they are in many cases dissatisfied to themselves "I don't know a way to manage this company in recession - all my great plans are trashed". Coffee table whiners are actually dissatisfied to themselves and they should listen the advise - just leave and go home.

Close to whining are conditional wisdoms where one says something for which he/she has no actual recipe or even desire to have action plan. In Finland one area falling to this is "we should invest more into service business development". And nothing happens or if does it is managed by engineers who have no clue about service business... And now I did it - I fell into the whining trap.

Please be careful out there and do not fall into whining traps.