“Dusty BMW abandoned at the airport”.

This headline caught my eye on a recent trip to Austin, Texas. Apparently a 1985 BMW 7 series sedan has been parked in the same space at Austin International Airport since September 2000. At this point, the owner who picks it up will owe $6,480. That’s $18 a
day for 360 days. Among Austin’s frequent fliers, the vehicle has become a celebrity of sorts.

How could this happen? How could something of value be abandoned, forgotten or overlooked by someone? The more I thought about it, I realized that many of us have less obvious “abandoned BMW’s” in our personal or professional lives and organizations. How about you?
What have you abandoned? Here’s a list to contemplate.

• We’ve abandoned our cash cows. 
During both economic surges and slumps, sales and marketing people often tell customers, “Sure we can do that.” While meeting a customer’s needs is the right thing to do, left unchecked, it can result in unnecessary product line complexity, profit-draining activities, resource-draining customers and non-value added inventory. A rapidly growing real estate company, for example, expanded their services and overhead in recent years to include lots, farms, condos and commercial business. Activity Based Costing (ABC) quickly reminded the management team that residential sales is the cash cow, e.g. 93% of profit. What is your organization’s cash cow? Is that product, service or customer being milked or left out in the pasture?
• We’ve abandoned the activity of thinking.
Managers, especially during an economic downturn, do not spend enough quiet time thinking. It is very easy for a manager to get caught up working “in their business” instead of working “on their business”. If we abandon thinking, we abandon the opportunity to adapt strategies to the changing business landscape or defining
• B-Hags…Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Wal-Mart, as discussed in the best-selling book “Built to Last”, has survived over multiple generations because they have a B-HAG. When your vision becomes smaller than your opposition, you set yourself up for failure. Does your company have a B-HAG?
• We’ve abandoned talking and listening. 
American fathers spoke with their children 45 minutes a day on average in the 1960’s. Today that “quality time” has shrunk to about six minutes. In “The Effective Executive”, Peter Drucker says we simply have no idea where our time goes. He recommends “activity accounting”… deliberately log the specifics of our actual behavior in quarter-hour blocks and compare it to your goals. As those of you who have implemented activity accounting can attest, the findings can be enlightening, humbling and sometimes embarrassing.The log will document what we “are doing” as well as what we “no longer do”.
• We’ve abandoned the basic principles that made our nation and organizations great. 
Principles based on honesty, respect and trust. My pastor often says, “Americans have become so open minded, their brains are falling out.” What is the “line in the sand” for you and your organization? Has it been rubbed out in recent years? In their new book “The Myth of Excellence”, authors Fred Crawford and Ryan Mathews state, “people are so hungry for basic human values, values they’re not experiencing in their day-to-day lives, that they will flock to a company that provides them.” The authors were shocked to learn in their research that lowest price is not the customer’s primary measure of excellence. 
• We’ve abandoned our mission.
When I ask clients during workshops to recite their company mission statement from memory, over 90% fail. If you can’t remember it, you’ve abandoned it. Don’t abandon your organization’s mission statement… its statement of principles, priorities and values. If employees can’t recite it, simplify. Then filter your budget through the mission. Is management’s allocation of resources in sync with the mission? Or are there inconsistencies that need correction before starting the New Year? In Al Ries’ book, “Focus”, the introduction begins with these lines: “The sun is a powerful source of energy. Every hour the sun washes the earth with billions of kilowatts of energy. Yet with a hat and some sunscreen, you can bathe in the light of the sun for hours at a time with few ill effects. A laser is a weak source of energy. A laser takes a few watts of energy and focuses them in a coherent stream of light. But with a laser, you can drill a hole in a diamond or wipe out a cancer.” Don’t abandon your mission. Focus your mission.

The cost of abandonment can be significant. According to the Austin American-Statesman’s newspaper report, the airport BMW is worth less than its parking fee… $4,000 sales value versus the parking fee of $6,480! Have you or your organization abandoned something of value? If so, don’t let the value of whatever you’ve “parked” exceed its worth.

Send your comments on this article to Tom Pryor at TomPryor@icms.net. Call 817-475-2945 to talk to an ABM expert about your ABM needs.