My New Running Shoes.

My birthday was approaching and I am the very definition of the guy who has everything. For Christmas I got a keyboard to accompany my electric and acoustic guitars, bass guitar, violin, banjo, ukulele and bagpipes. I play a lot of musical instruments; my parents refused to pay for cable when I was a kid.

So I really had to search my mind for what I wanted this year. Though my wife Maura is an excellent gift buyer, even she was at a loss for what to get me. Since exercise had become our new thing, I started thinking of what could make the grind of 6 a.m. workouts just a bit easier. And then I realized there was something I had needed for a while: new running shoes.

In the past I would just go to the mall and pick out a pair in my old size. Now, however, I'm a bit pickier and slightly more accustomed to being handled, so we went to the New Balance store for a custom fit.

The guys in the store winced in pain when they saw my existing running shoes. They were a size tight and way too narrow. Having been a wrestler and a rock climber, I had always believed that shoes should be tight enough to break something. Think about it: when you are using your feet to pose on a rocky ledge or on the neck of some idiot from Norcross High, you don't want your feet to slip around inside the shoe.

The New Balance guy had me stand on a machine which measured my feet and made a recommendation. I was in no position to disagree with the shoe he suggested and the only real decision to make was the color. But this was harder than it sounds.

Throughout college, everyone wore grey New Balance running shoes (that is, when they weren't wearing their redneck work boots). And not necessarily for running. Just 'cause. And I'm not sure what the reasoning was. Perhaps because the grey 991s were amongst the more expensive shoes on the market and rich never goes out of style. Maybe it was because they were so understated, what with other manufacturers putting out shoes in electric blue with florescent mucous-colored accents. Even as I started to make the sounds of "Gggrrreee..." I stopped with an abrupt, "I'll take the blue ones". Maura asked me in the car why I choose blue over the old stalwart. "Because I don't want to be stuck in college". She knew exactly what I was saying, but the truth is we're all stuck in college.

Maybe not college per se, but there is a period in life where your sense of style begins to crystallize and you will use that point of reference to craft your style from there out. It's why my grandpa wears shirts with suspiciously large collars. He also wears velour jumpsuits. It's why you always see that group of people who look like they're dressed to go on a hike. That was the campus style in the early 1990s, and they've been on the trail wherever they go ever since. Your style gets locked in and, even though you may try to fight against it, it's difficult. And you may emerge looking a little odd. We've all seen that guy who tries to dress like a pro skateboarder or the mom who thinks she's a backup dancer for Britney Spears. It's just sad.

Why do we get locked in? It's comfortable, like grandpa's jumpsuit. And since our peers seem to be doing it we figure it can't be all that far from fashionable.

Businesses have their college years. They shed the old duds from high school and start looking fresh and successful. Like all of us, almost every business can point to that period known as "the days" and at least something from "the days" has persisted. And there's nothing wrong with remembering the past. Heck, sometimes our old style becomes retro fashionable, renewing our vitality while garnering us the credential of an originator. The problem is when we need to break with the past but are unaware or simply don't know how.

Some giant businesses were the big man on campus back in their day. Sears might have been the biggest. Talk about good looks and likeability. But today Sears is a shadow of its former self. What happened after graduation?

From a strategic standpoint, Sears failed to age gracefully. The "get it all here" approach was successful so long as boutique and specialty shops stayed at bay. But them Home Depot came and took their tools. Best Buy took their TVs. Bed Bath & Beyond came and took the softer side of Sears. And everyone else came and looted clothes, tires and financial services. Yes, if you didn't know, you used to be able to buy financial services at Sears.

What should have happened? Sears really has great customer service. If you haven't shopped there (and they still exist when you read this book) you should really go. The people are polite and know what they are talking about. The cornerstone brands (Die Hard, Kenmore, Craftsman) have really great quality. Sears really does provide a great shopping experience.

But they don't leverage that experience. They don't say, "Come to Sears because we know what we're selling and you will get great quality". They say what they have always said, which is, "We have a bunch of stuff...come buy it". Their failure, metaphorically, was not getting a new color shoe. What worked in the past was successful in the past. It is no longer the past.

So how does this happen? I believe it is simply a function of great strategies and their lifespan. I believe that when a truly great strategy is conceived, the proponents of this strategy go about selling it up and down the organization. If they are successful in getting buy-in and the whole company exudes the same strategy, assuming the strategy is good, I would expect wild success.

But then time happens. And though great strategies, like great styles, can have an inhuman lifespan, they are never immortal. The progenitors of the strategy retire to the palm coast. And everyone left has been taught that the way we succeed is by following Ol' Man So-n-So's time-tested and time-worn strategy.

The people now in charge do not necessarily attempt to birth new ideas. They were raised through the company ranks by following someone else's progeny. And if they disagreed or had critiques, they probably did not last to be in charge of much. I'm not saying this is always the case. I'm not saying this is the case with your company; that's a question only you can answer. What I'm saying is that maybe you should ask the question of whether or not you're wearing yesterday's clothes.

In other words: Have we evolved how we market our product in the right way or are we using yesterday's strategy to address the requirements of tomorrow's market?

This is normally the part where I list some bullet points or conversation starters, but that's not what I'm going to do. This kind of inquiry is far too complex and subjective for a few mere questions. Instead, I implore you to ask a few tough questions of your own with the goal being to understand the root of your company's competitive strategy. No matter what you find, I think you'll at least find value in having a better perspective of where you are now as an organization and where you are headed.

This is an important issue for most companies. The world of competitive marketing is changing. Strategies and tactics need updating. The way companies view and interact with consumers will always be changing. Time is running. And right now it might have on blue running shoes.