This is a funny video of a dog who attacks his own foot, thinking it is trying to steal his bone. I got this link from YouTube from a suggestion offered by my Full Sail course.

But I am including it here because I think there is a valuable lesson here. At first blush it seems rather silly for a Dog to attack his own foot. Doesn’t he know what his own feet are doing?

But if you compare this dog to a company where the parts of the dog are compared to different parts of the company, very interesting parallel arises. I presume that most people would think that the head of the dog is the president or CEO. Maybe the feet are the salespeople and the tail is the accounting department. It really doesn’t matter to me which part of the company is compared to what part of the dog.

What interests me is how many times I have seen companies fight among themselves, internally, even though they’re after the same goal.

There’s all kinds of analogies we could make here including comparing fights between sales and production, accusations of those who want to take all the credit, differences in philosophy between marketing and accounting, etc. and believe me, sometimes those fights are far more vicious than this dog’s teeth.

The goal of any company needs to be to gain and keep profitable customers. Profits alone cannot suffice. A company that only has the narrow goal of profits will cut short much-needed plans and activities to maintain a customer’s return. A company that only produces products just to maintain production will lose profitability.

But every company needs to have a heart and soul associated with it so that reaching the goal of getting “the bone” can be shared by every member of the organization. When everybody understands the marketing plan of the company, proper communication can take place and everyone may know their value in the company and can thus contribute greatly to profits