Monday 9 May 2011, 01:01
I have a secret concern about the Business Nightmares programme. I worry that you'll enjoy it too much.
I worry that you'll revel in the stupidity of the mistakes, laugh at the businesses involved and idly sit back, comfortable in the knowledge that you would never be as daft.
Of course, I can see why you might react that way and I'm not saying that I don't want you to enjoy the programme at all. And I certainly don't want to suggest that it doesn't have its laugh-out-loud moments.
It's just that I don't want Business Nightmares to make you all feel smug about the failings of business.
If there is a reason why most of us would not make mistakes on the scale of the characters in the programme, it is simply that most of us don't make complex decisions like the people in the programme.
We don't create companies, launch new products or devise marketing campaigns.
When most of us make mistakes they tend to be rather routine. Whether we be journalists or dentists, filing clerks or mechanics, we err all the time and rectify (or ignore) our mistakes as we discover them.
But for those in business, it is different.
They live in a world governed by gods that are particularly creative.
Gods that hate to make life regular, that enjoy playing with the unpredictable and that like to challenge the brave.
So when we see people in business fail, we must always ask whether they deserve respect rather than derision.
For example, in the three-part series of Business Nightmares, some of the nightmares are simply genuinely difficult situations that no amount of clever handling could resolve.
What exactly would you have done if you were running Polaroid when digital cameras came along?
We feature gambles that were taken perfectly reasonably, but which didn't happen to pay off in the end. The Rabbit phone seemed like an awfully good idea when mobile phones were beyond the reach of ordinary people, but is easily ridiculed now.
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And we tell the stories of what I call "good" mistakes - those which result from trying to be ambitious and original. Boo.com was ambitiously ahead of its time but at least it wasn't stuck in the past.
Of course, there are a few straightforward bad mistakes too: the genuine howlers that prompt one to ask, "What were they thinking?"
Royal Bank of Scotland's takeover of ABN Amro as a banking crisis broke in 2007 comes to mind. But there are fewer of those than you would think.
So here's my tip in watching the programme. Laugh at the funny bits. Revel in the mistakes. But laugh with the protagonists not at them.
And be inspired by them to take a few risks of your own, to be ambitious and to move outside your comfort zone to the arenas of life where error is inevitable.
Business Nightmares with Evan Davis is on BBC Two at 8pm on Monday, 9 May.
Evan Davis is the presenter of Business Nightmares. He also a presenter on Radio 4's Today Programme, and BBC Two's Dragons' Den.
For further programme times, please visit the upcoming episodes page.
Comments made by writers on the BBC TV blog are their own opinions and not necessarily those of the BBC.
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Friday 6 May 2011, 10:06
Wednesday 11 May 2011, 09:54
Comment number 1.
luinw69th May 2011 - 9:49
I must say the Hoover free flights disaster proved to be of great benefit to us. We needed a wet and dry vacuum cleaner anyway and we persisted with the labyrinthine process Hoover had put in place to obtain flights but eventually got away and had a fab holiday in Florida. Whilst there we bought a timeshare apartment in Sarasota which we kept for nine years, making many long-standing American friends plus making a $2,000 profit when we sold it and best of all - we're still using the wet and dry vacuum cleaner. Result for us, shame about Hoover UK.
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Comment number 2.
RonJ79th May 2011 - 11:19
Evan,
Didn't one of our greatest companies, (that former FTSE bell-weather) ICI plc, get it terribly wrong?
They lost their competitive edge mainly because of the low-wage competition from the far east and from a handful of more efficient western companies.
They put a far too lengthy accounting depreciation period on their plants and equipment, eventually and predictably resulting in enormous insupportable maintenance costs, as an 'internal' mistake. Were too slow in making their considerably overmanned staff redundant when it became apparent in the early 1960s, and employed an over abundant number of highly paid chartered accountants and other technical staffs. They are now a mere 'division' of the company of which was once a division of their own, Nobel. It was a complete disaster for their shareholders, staff, and the country's industrial reputation in my eyes.
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Comment number 3.
Moorstuff9th May 2011 - 17:39
Thank you for restoring my status in the family with the Mini Story. I worked for Ford in 60s and we couldn't understand why we were paying taxes on our profits to subsidise the Mini competition with our Anglia. My kids all thought this was an old buffer's urban myth.
Have you got the one about Monsanto and Glyphosate (Roundup). Thecut the price (by about 25% I think) to squeeze out the competition, but they weren't the lowest cost producer! I worked for ICI Plant Protection then and we and may others carried on competeing with our own versions. All Monsanto did was reduce the value of the market and their profits accordingly
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Comment number 4.
andymac9th May 2011 - 19:54
This looks like a very interesting series... I am currently reading a lot of case studies and literature on the same topics. "If You Build It, Will They Come?" for example is one book that talks about taking products from concept/idea to market.
I live in the US now but is there any liklihood that this will make its way onto BBC America?
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Comment number 5.
travash9th May 2011 - 21:35
Hi Evan
May I add this to your stories - but this time success rising from the ashes of disaster.
In the sixties I worked at Thomas Hedley's (later Proctor & Gamble) factory. At this time they were making a soap powder called 'Cheer'. Coloured a pale sort of orange, the public hated it. When I as there they were giving away an assortment of free gifts to try to persaude people to buy it, all without success.
Eventually, it was withdrawn. However, removing the orange dye, flaking a few green specks of a P&G best seller into it - and bingo! Fairy Snow was born and became a runaway success.
There was a failure whilst I was there. Do you remember Camay?
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Comments 5 of 33