The title should really be: How Corporate America Went Wrong, shifting attention from customers to investors.

The gist is the difference from a few decades ago with how major corporations conducted their business and now is striking.  Ultimately, their ever tightening relationship with investors has shifted their focus away from the essential client base.  It’s easy to understand why companies act the way they do, when they pay more attention to investors instead of the customers who buy their products, services go down.

It’s natural for companies to need more money and turn to investors.  Consumers should benefited from this.  But companies saw they could have more profits and headed down the wrong road by relying too much on investors, giving them too much leverage.  The result over the 80s and 90s was that companies courted investors more than their current base clients, alienating themselves.  It’s a naive representation, but its makes the point.

It’s a tricky line between spending time and energy on your clients, while seeking investors.  Investors can bring the much needed extra cash for a company but they come in with demands, sometimes without understand the business.  Case in point, the 12 billion dollars IPO for Groupon is hardly justifiable.

So What Can Be Done?  It will be difficult for corporations worldwide to come back to intelligent management, while rebuilding a sustainable way forward.  If a company focuses on customer service, which has been on a constant deterioration for the past decades, while showing investors it is taking care of business, it will win both.

Why has Apple done so well with only 15% of the smart phone market share?  Its cultures is translated into its products.  It walk the fine line (so far) between being innovative, delivering quality products that are needed and listening to what customers want.  Who cares about a fraction of the market when you pay a premium for products that work better than the competition?

What Can We Do?  The most important role will come from consumers who need to exercise intelligently their use of their credit cards.  By buying form the smaller, yet more competitive company that offers the same service with better products and who still vies for your attention is one way of keeping competition alive.  It sends the message loud and clear to those companies who cater too much to investors demands that go against their customer base.  In other words, once it gets too big, choose another company!  We wouldn’t have monopolies and little to no use for laws against them.

Why am I writing this?  First, I came to the US in the 70s when it was business treated you very, very differently.  Second, I’ve been through a few weeks of dancing to the tune the corporate futility.  My Internet provider speed was well below advertised.  As I started shopping around, it was clear Verizon, the only other “choice” didn’t have a user friendly site where you could get all the information needed before buying.  I guess they think I will just buy without checking the competition out.  As I started shopping for a new cell phone, I went through a similar rigmarole with the big three, and found Metro PCS to offer the best bang for your buck.  See here for this story.

I’ve also been motivated seeing the increasing complexity around internet services.  Apple’s current services is nothing compared to what we’ve come to expect form them.  iTunes had one department that didn’t speak to the Mobile Me one who had no contact with the online store.  I ended up with 3 accounts, an iTunes, website accounts, Mobile Me and a series 1 iPhone that would loose passwords forcing me through a series of futile and utterly frustrating procedure of resetting my password.  To add to it all, none of these passwords could be the ones I used in the past year… You know why, right?  Security!  Certainly, this is not what we expect from Apple and I am no criminal.

And the list goes on and on as America finds itself like a young teenager at the end of a big bash with a buzz and wanting more without knowing how, desperately clinging to how it used to be.  It is safe to say, little to no corporations have given any thoughts as to: “What if our product doesn’t sell?”.  Microsoft invented decades ago the reach out, embrace and choke approach which eventually sterilized competition.  And putting myself in their shoes, I can almost understand these people running those corporations.  They have gone through school that give high degrees based on template solving.  And why not?  After all, it’s the next CEO’s problem…

In the meantime, you have a desperate political scene fighting for relevancy giving us two clear message.  The government will take care of you, on the one hand and work more, on the other.  How about we reclaim our power. which we temporarily gave away?

In the meantime, you can watch this if you need courage, you’re not alone…