A Johnson & Johnson senior brand manager was presenting his brand's annual plan to the executive group. Early in the presentation a slide popped up with the heading "Lessons Learned". After he covered the "Lessons Learned", the VP of Operations asked him to stop.
This VP had been with J&J for about 30 years and he was one of those great folks who had no hidden agenda - he said what he meant and he meant what he said. Gene made this pronouncement: "I have sat through countless presentations by this brand and every year the brand presents the same list of supposed lessons learned. It would appear that we are not applying any of these learnings, so wouldn't it make more sense for the title of the slide to read, "Lessons Available To Be Learned."
When your VP of Marketing moves brand managers from brand to brand too frequently, the business suffers. One of the byproducts of frequent movement is not the cross-pollination of best practices but rather, repetition of beginner's mistakes, because people don't get the time to intimately know the customer, marketplace, competition and what works and doesn't work.
O.D.O.o.O.D.B.
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