Sitting on the edge of a counter is a bucket. Only partially filled, it continues to let water escape -- drip by drip -- from a hole at the bottom. Scurrying back and forth is a team of people, trying in vain to add enough water to fill the bucket ... or at least keep it level. But the water leaks out faster than the people can add to it. So they work even harder, but again to no avail. Realizing that there is a problem, they call a meeting to discuss possible tactics for successfully adding even more water. Decisions are made -- add more people in the water-filling process, spend more money, work even harder and for longer hours. In the past, similar approaches proved to be futile, but they would be tried again. Surprisingly, it never occurs to anyone that it would make more sense to either stop the leak or at least slow the drip as much as possible.

This scena

rio takes place every day. Companies -- large and small -- often fail to realize how and why their customers are leaking out of their buckets; they just know that they are indeed leaking out. So they decide to spend more money and man-hours on sales, marketing, and advertising, thinking that they can outpace the loss. These costly methods occasionally look like they succeed. However, many companies, seeing their apparent success, ignore their lack of profitability.