Watching Tuesday night’s State of the Union address by President Trump, I was struck by the theater of the event. These addresses are always a major production, complete with guests who personify certain talking points the commander in chief wishes to emphasize. These citations generally are capped with an acknowledgment of the sacrifice made or the challenge being endured, followed by a commitment from the president to implement or expand policy that speaks to the issue.
With few exceptions, one party rises to applaud, the other sits on its hands. In living rooms across America, half of the households are teary-eyed with pride and joy at the tremendous performance given by the president, a true American hero who cares about the common man. The other half grits its teeth, damning the continued lies they feel are being spouted and flabbergasted by the people who follow him unquestionably.
Welcome to the Era of Division. Us versus them. Pick a side.
It’s amazing how so many people can listen to the same speech and hear different things, polarized to the point where it’s an all-or-none proposition. The president is either a misunderstood businessman who is trying to apply the Art of the Deal to American government or a pathological liar only interested in leveraging the power of the White House to his own benefit. Neither is completely true. If politics were real estate, one could purchase a large tract of land in the middle on the cheap. The remaining inhabitants of that neighborhood have been bullied to take up residence in one of the extremes.
A remark made by a friend on social media brought the topic into clearer view for me. He wrote, “My 401K was up 18.52% last year, so retirement is looking pretty good right now.” I gave it a thumbs up, then promptly frowned to myself. Around 2009, I recalled a worker making a similar proclamation regarding his 401K status, but the arrow was pointing sharply downward. “Just like that, I lost $24,000,” he said, shaking his head. Others experienced even more somber news. Ah, the volatility of retirement accounts. The cycle of business and the economy.
I’m not here to bash the president. If SpongeBob SquarePants put together a compelling platform, he would get my vote. But no one person can stem a rising tide. The real problem is the Oval Office tends to get more credit for successes that are largely a factor of cyclical conditions, such as the economy, and entirely too much blame when things go south.
Choosing a side entails rooting against the common good. No one wants to see a recession, even though we’ve never had a 10-year, recession-free period in America for at least the last 100 years…until now. Regardless of the attribution to a cause, negative influences will invariably visit us and send the economy into a tailspin.
Middle Ground
You’ve heard this wolf cry before, but the cynic in me is giving way to an optimist who wants to deliver a different message: Move more to the center from a business standpoint. The polar opposites, as I see them, cast MFP growth on one side and M&A growth on the other. In the long run, adhering to just one philosophy or the other is a recipe for disaster.
A hard-hitting recession can be particularly tough on either front (thanks, Captain Obvious), but those dealers who have diversified their product and service offering to resemble a spread offense in football will be better armed to weather an economic downturn. During the Great Recession, I witnessed the economy absolutely ravage the commercial printing industry. Those companies that focused narrowly on one or two segments to serve were shaken off the business tree, like rotten fruit. Meanwhile, their competitors – who had long since broken free of their reliance on old, heavy printing presses – snapped up their assets and customer lists on the cheap.
Any conversation about a centrist movement would be incomplete without extolling the virtues of managed services—print, networks, security, energy, etc. Subscription-based selling also appears to be a fait accompli, led by high-visibility dealers such as Marco and manufacturers like Konica Minolta supporting the movement. Production print belongs in the conversation; ditto for interactive flat-screen panels. And future office technologies go hand-in-hand with vertically-position products that speak to markets such as education, legal, finance, et al.
There is comfort (and safety) in numbers, along with the notion that if this populist view of product and service offerings ultimately takes dealers down the rabbit hole, then a bulk of the industry is in big trouble. Unlike politics, taking up residence in the middle ground of the office dealer world is not as compromising or subject to criticism. And no one will tear up your script.
