Just when you think your business life is as full of challenges as you may ever want – flaming competition, unending change, scarcity of top employees – along comes a stock market nosedive. “Is this the Big One?” you ask yourself (and your broker, if he’ll come to the phone).
Well, there’s not much point trying to figure that one out. The fast answer is that no one knows. What we do know is that realists will accept the market swoon as one more challenge and get on with the job. There’s no reward for curling up and crying.
There is, however, a reward for going out and meeting challenges head on. A couple of very provocative and forceful speakers at the Pacific Jewelry Show conference program in August dealt at least tangentially with this concept. Barbara Duncan, a senior executive with the Disney organization, said that when her company is looking for leaders among its