When Passion Becomes Organizational Myopia

Organizational myopia emerges when business owners, executives, and employees become excessively attached to their organizations, products, or services.

Commitment is essential to organizational success. However, excessive emotional attachment can distort judgment and weaken strategic decisions.

Over time, executives may begin defending products simply because they created them. Similarly, employees may protect established practices because those practices represent the organization’s history.

Consequently, the company gradually loses its ability to question what once made it successful.

This is the essence of organizational myopia: the inability to recognize when established products, services, or business models no longer deliver meaningful value to stakeholders.

Organizations Exist to Create Value, Not Admiration

A company does not become relevant simply because its owners admire it.

Likewise, a product does not acquire market value because its creators consider it exceptional.

Instead, organizational relevance depends on the needs, expectations, and evaluations of stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, and society.

Among these groups, customers occupy a particularly important position. Ultimately, they determine whether a company’s products and services deserve their preference.

Nevertheless, organizations sometimes confuse internal admiration with external recognition.

Their executives may celebrate technological achievements, historical accomplishments, or operational excellence while overlooking changes in customer expectations.

As a result, the organization becomes increasingly concerned with preserving its identity rather than maintaining its relevance.

From Marketing Myopia to Organizational Myopia

Theodore Levitt popularized the concept of marketing myopia by explaining the dangers of defining a business through its products rather than the needs it serves.

For example, a railway company may believe that its business consists of operating trains. However, customers primarily seek transportation solutions.

This distinction matters because other technologies may eventually satisfy those needs more effectively.

Similarly, a company that identifies itself exclusively with a particular product may overlook alternatives that offer greater customer value.

Yet the problem can extend beyond marketing.

Organizational myopia develops when the organization’s identity itself becomes an object of excessive attachment.

Executives then defend structures, processes, products, and decisions primarily because they belong to the company’s established history.

Consequently, questioning existing practices may be perceived as disloyalty rather than constructive analysis.

The Danger of Falling in Love with Products

Consider a company that has successfully marketed a product for decades.

Its executives understand its history. Employees participated in its development, while the product represents important organizational achievements.

However, market conditions begin to change.

New technologies emerge, competitors introduce alternatives, and customers gradually develop different preferences.

Despite these developments, management continues investing heavily in the traditional product.

Why?

Because executives remain emotionally attached to it.

At this point, loyalty to organizational history can replace commitment to market relevance.

Instead of asking which solutions customers currently need, managers concentrate on preserving what the company already produces.

The product stops being a means of satisfying needs and becomes an organizational end in itself.

This transformation represents one of the most dangerous consequences of organizational myopia.

When Stakeholders Stop Being Heard

Excessive attachment also damages relationships with stakeholders.

Rather than understanding changing expectations, organizations may attempt to convince customers that their existing offerings remain superior.

Customer complaints become signs of misunderstanding. Emerging preferences are dismissed as temporary trends. Meanwhile, internal criticism may be treated as a threat to organizational identity.

Gradually, management constructs a comfortable interpretation of reality.

Unfortunately, that interpretation may differ substantially from how customers, employees, and other stakeholders perceive the organization.

The company becomes increasingly concerned with protecting what it values internally and less interested in discovering what the market actually needs.

Therefore, maintaining meaningful dialogue with stakeholders is essential to preventing organizational myopia.

Companies Are Providers of Solutions

Organizations must recognize that products and services are means, not ends.

Customers do not necessarily purchase products because of their history, technical sophistication, or importance to their manufacturers.

Instead, they seek benefits, experiences, and solutions to specific problems.

Competitive organizations must therefore question their offerings continuously.

Several questions deserve particular attention:

• What problems do our products and services solve?
• Do customers still experience these problems?
• Are more effective alternatives available?
• Why have certain customers stopped choosing us?
• Which market changes are we reluctant to acknowledge?

These questions shift management’s attention from internal admiration toward external value creation.

Furthermore, they help identify when products, services, or entire business models require transformation.

Recognizing When Something Has Lost Relevance

One of management’s most difficult responsibilities is acknowledging when a product, service, or business model has lost market relevance.

Past investments, organizational traditions, and emotional attachment may encourage executives to preserve declining activities.

However, maintaining outdated offerings can consume resources that could support more promising solutions.

This does not mean abandoning products whenever difficulties arise.

Rather, management should continuously evaluate their contribution, future prospects, and ability to satisfy genuine needs.

Sometimes, protecting the organization’s long-term capacity to create value requires abandoning what it once admired most.

Conclusion: Management Must Look Outside

Commitment from owners, executives, and employees can strengthen an organization. Nevertheless, when commitment prevents criticism and adaptation, it becomes a strategic weakness.

Companies do not exist to satisfy their owners’ admiration for their own creations. They exist to generate value recognized by stakeholders.

Therefore, management must distinguish institutional pride from organizational attachment.

Products can age. Services may lose relevance. Business models can become inadequate.

The decisive question is not whether executives remain passionate about what their companies produce.

It is whether customers and other stakeholders still have compelling reasons to value what those companies offer.

Organizational myopia begins when management stops asking that question.

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Affonso Henriques
PhD pela ESADE Business School & Law – Barcelona – Espanha.