The 8 C-Words of Successful Businesses – Revisited for 2025

An article I published a decade ago about business words that start with “C” has been getting some recent traction. It gave me pause to reflect on how relevant it remains today, and whether there were additional “C words” beyond the original eight that might be worth adding to the mix based on the same criteria. As it turns out, I still believe those original eight words still matter. But, a lot has changed. So, here is the original piece with with brief notes (in italics) for each offering a fresh perspective – and some new essential “C words” for 2025:

It occurred to me recently that certain concepts, trends, guideposts, whatever you want to call them, kept coming up in my reading, research, discussions, and consultations. They’re not necessarily new or comprehensive, but definitely relevant as businesses succeed and fail faster in a business environment that is increasingly global and digital. And they all begin with the letter “C.” No, this isn’t (at least not directly) about “C-level” people, although I hope a few might read this.

So, without further ado, and not necessarily in order of importance, here’s my list of “C-words” and some musings about each:

1. Convenience

As technology continues to evolve rapidly, there is no more important word to consider. Speed and simplicity are now expected. I referenced Amazon and their commitment to convenience certainly hasn’t changed, and they’ve raised the bar. Apple is still competing in the world of streaming services, but clearly that is not their focus, nor their biggest challenge in the age of AI.

This is in the category of old news, but I still find myself saying to clients “It’s hard to go too wrong in a business that truly delivers convenience”, especially in a world that is seemingly too busy and complex (one of those “C-words” to avoid by the way). There are obvious examples like Uber (convenient transportation) and OpenTable (convenient dining reservations), but let’s not forget the big established players: Google (convenient web search), Amazon (convenient shopping), Meta (convenient social networking), and so forth.

Now, there are some important layers to the business value of offering convenience. Not all conveniences are created equal. I might be able to create an app to make it more convenient to deliver motor oil to your home, but most people would place a high value on that. Also, being a first mover in a category of convenience can be a key to success, but is not always necessary. MP3 players made listening to music more convenient, but it was really Apple that capitalized on that technology with the iPod player and iTunes platform, and they weren’t first. Better beat first in that case. Subscription or ad-based streaming services (vs. downloading) now appear to be the next level of music distribution convenience, and, interestingly, Apple is currently behind the curve on that one – and hoping their offering will again be better…

At the same time, Amazon did and still defines the standard in e-commerce. First won out there, largely because Amazon continues to make the digital retail experience increasingly convenient. They were first and better and that continues to be the case.

Is your business solving a problem that consumers value and are you the first and/or the best at delivering the associated convenience? If you are the first, are you thinking ahead to always be the best?

2, Control

The desire for control certainly hasn’t changed. However, the means of consumers to exercise this desire continues to increase across business categories. Linear TV is unbundling and declining as streaming provides multiple on-demand options. Access to information and e-commerce technology has continued to enhance how we research and execute purchase decisions. As old barriers to information flow collapse, especially in news, it’s become harder to separate fact from fiction.

I worked in the world of Interactive TV in its early days. I was convinced that “interactivity” was going to be the word in entertainment distribution and monetization. Certainly, interactivity in today’s digital world is a big thing. For example, I’ve voted online or via phone/text to try to help my favorites win on TV competition shows. But, the dominant word in content distribution and consumption today is really control.

• We want to watch TV shows and movies (assuming there’s much of a difference between those formats these days) when, where and how we choose..
• We binge.
• We skip commercials, and watch our favorite movies and shows “on demand.”

That genie is out of the bottle, for good.

Consumer desire for control is turning the media world upside down, but there are implications for other businesses as well. I might even argue that the increasing control of entertainment/content is influencing our expectations for other businesses.

• We’ve always dreaded the idea of buying a car and going through the multi-layered sales/negotiation process that dealers provided. Now, information and digital technology have wrestled much of that control from dealers and given it to consumers.
• I love wine. Maybe you do as well. If so, do you find yourself checking prices online before ordering that bottle at your favorite restaurant? I simply have more control over my choice in that transaction due to the accessibility of information.
• The “Fight of the Century” between Mayweather and Pacquiao may have been underwhelming, but one aspect stood out: the technical glitch that delayed the start. With Pay-per-View driving most of the revenue, the fight couldn’t begin until the broadcast reached every cable and satellite customer who had paid $100 to watch. In effect, the massive home audience was calling the shots—much to the frustration of those sitting ringside.

The desire for control is a powerful and instinctive human behavior. It’s the close cousin of convenience. Is your business resisting this irrevocable force or recognizing and providing the appropriate level of control to your customers?

3. Content

This one’s easy. We’re now immersed in a world of content creators, powered by platforms that support both creation and distribution. YouTube has become the most-viewed TV platform, built on millions of global creators. Traditional media companies, with their high-risk, high-reward model, haven’t found a real answer. Thanks to social media, content is being generated daily by everyone from young kids to Fortune 500 firms. And that’s before we even factor in AI.

There was a time when content was essentially considered to be the movies and television shows produced by Hollywood studios and the other production entities across the globe. One should also add in the editorial content created and distributed by newspapers and magazines. In short, it was entertainment or news. But now, businesses across countless categories are creating content. And the prevailing theory is that if your business isn’t in the content business, you’re either not optimizing your growth potential – or you’re in trouble. What’s this all about?

Well, in the simplest terms, digital technology has knocked down the walls in which text, audio, and video can be delivered directly and instantly to consumers across the world. Beyond the business model and piracy issues this created for traditional media players, it also generated both the opportunity and expectation that your business will have a more direct relationship with your consumers.

These new channels of communication include everything from (not so new) email to video platforms like You Tube and an increasing array of social media and gaming platforms. These can and are being used to take traditional advertising messages, once reserved for paid media channels like TV, radio, and magazines, and deliver those messages to a wider (often incremental) audience.

But people want more than just advertising delivered in these new channels; they expect some level of relationship and engagement. That’s where content can be essential. Content in this sense is defined as words and/or images that provide information and context to the why, where, and how of what you’re selling. This is content engaging email recipients and potentially motivating them to visit a web or mobile site/app, or social media platform – and in most cases, buy something. And consumers, particularly Millennials, are saying (with their wallets) that if I don’t have that connection with your enterprise, I may go elsewhere to a competitor that does.

Content creation and management are not easy. They can be resource intensive processes and add as much risk as reward. It seems like a day or week doesn’t go by when a company tweets something on Twitter that quickly goes viral and becomes an exercise in damage control. That said, consumers have spoken and ultimately what was a “nice to have” is now a “must have.”
Is your company in and effectively “playing” the content game? And that leads to the next “C-word…”

4. Creativity

As I look back on my examples of creativity, it again illustrates that a lot has transpired over the last decade. Nonetheless, the importance of creativity across every business and at every level remains unchanged. As we turn more and more to technology in all aspects of our lives, I can only hope that the human element that ultimately drives true creativity doesn’t get overlooked or lost.

Books have been written about creativity, and I won’t try to compete with them. I will simply say that as powerful as creativity is, it’s often undervalued, undermanaged, and/or underexploited. In my experience, the obvious example of the impact of creativity is in advertising where a great ad can literally change the growth curve of a business overnight. TV as a media platform for a great ad held that promise for years – much less so now – while great content going viral in social media is often seen as today’s holy grail in accelerating growth.

So, yes, creativity is an obvious and necessary part of advertising and social media. But I also like to think of it in the broader context of so many aspects of business: Scrum as a more agile and effective project management concept is a very creative process. The creativity behind the product design and technology behind Elon Musk’s Tesla is amazing. How did the creativity of the original iPhone design change the mobile phone category? A visit to Zappos headquarters provides a showcase in creativity in motivating people to provide stellar customer service. In effect, creativity when applied to people, process, and product is a powerful thing. And the best businesses have engines that hit on all of these creative cylinders.

But I think the most misunderstood part of creativity is where it comes from. Just as I believe that leaders are not born, but can be developed, I also believe that we are all creative (in different ways) and successful organizations tap into the creativity of their teams at all levels. They don’t just depend on the head of design, the Chief Creative Officer, or any one individual or group to drive the innovations necessary for business success.

Is your company bringing creativity to all phases of your business and are you tapping into the inherent creativity of your team members?

5. Communication

I spoke originally of the importance of communication across a number of contexts. I can only state a decade later that for whatever changes, the importance and impact of communication is greater than ever. We’ve witnessed the power – and danger – related to the ease in which anyone can communicate unfiltered to large audiences. Nonetheless, in a world of deepfakes and distrust, clear and honest communication can still build trust and loyalty.

Is it a sound if a tree falls in the middle of the desert and no one is there to hear it? I don’t know. But I do know that for all of the progress in communication technologies that continue to make the world smaller, communication within business organizations has always been a challenge in my experience. Sometimes, it’s about not getting the words right in trying to communicate the company’s strategy and tactics. Or, it may have been about leadership that preferred to keep information vital to the entire organization accessible only to the top layer of management. It may have been about not having appropriate processes in place to facilitate the easy flow of information from top to bottom – and bottom to top. Sometimes, it’s frankly just a deadly form of company politics, where information – and the withholding of it – is seen as a source of power.

But I’ve also seen the other positive side of this. It was related to my experience in starting up a new business within a Fortune 500 company as part of its international expansion. There was a tight launch deadline with new hires seemingly arriving everyday with projects and plans moving at a rapid pace. But, in this case, the mission, the what, and the why, were very clear and easy to communicate. And while there were many factors (and people involved) in what was ultimately a successful launch of that business, I put a lot of weight on the clarity and communication of the message and its impact on the team to bond and work in concert, despite the numerous obstacles faced.

Strategy is essential to any successful business. There are not many worse (or wasteful) things in business than having a well-trained, well-organized, and motivated team being led down the wrong (strategic) road, or simply not knowing what the road is. However, if you’ve taken the necessary time and effort in your business to define (and continually evolve) your strategy, it is only as good as your ability to communicate it to the team and, of course, reinforce the message on a regular basis.

There is, of course, an external element to this notion of effective communication that cannot be overlooked. Getting funding for a new business is not an easy task. But how often are good business concepts rejected by investors due to a founder’s inability to communicate concisely what the business is and how it will ultimately make money for the venture and, of course, the investors?

I’m a huge admirer of Winston Churchill. His life holds many lessons for all of us. But his facility with words and his ability to communicate were as powerful as any weapons utilized in World War II, particularly in the dark days of the Battle of Britain.

As the leader of your organization, you have to write and speak a great deal. However, are you communicating?

6. Culture

I don’t need to re-litigate the case I made below. The most noteworthy note I offer a decade later relates to the ongoing post Covid pandemic debate about employees working at home vs. in the office – and the impact on culture. The studies I’ve seen present data that can be interpreted to support either side. Nonetheless, my experience across a range of organizations tells me that no matter the office situation, the fundamentals I articulated below and the importance of strong leadership in the culture-building process remain unchanged.

We’ve all read the famous quote attributed to Peter Drucker: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I don’t actually believe that in the literal sense, although I also believe it was not intended to be strictly interpreted. Strategy and culture are attached at the hip so there is no need to debate which is the cart and which is the horse. You need both to move forward.
I worked in business and led teams for a number of years before I fully understood the impact of culture in achieving the desired goals. Again, this is a topic about which volumes have been written, so I will only offer a personal perspective related to some lessons learned about the importance and impact of culture.

To start, if you are an entrepreneur starting up a business or have a venture in its early stage, put this “C-word” high up on your “To Do” list. Culture, like weeds, will grow and spread on its own. Thinking about it early on provides the opportunity to shape the culture rather than realizing later on that your organization looks, feels, and operates in a manner that is out of synch with your vision. Trust me, shaping a culture as you start and build a business is much more manageable than trying to change an engrained culture later on.

It is often said that when a company gets to be 100+ employees, the game changes. Direct communication up and down the organization doesn’t happen as easily or naturally. Process becomes more critical, and the impact – good or bad – of culture really kicks in. At the risk of over-simplifying, I’ve learned there are a few basic steps to take, no matter the stage of your company, are invaluable in making culture a catalyst of growth vs. a pond of quicksand:

Define your mission. Make sure everyone knows the answer to the “why?” of getting up in the morning and working for your company. It’s the core of employee engagement
Define the values that underpin how you want the company to conduct business.
Communicate the above openly and regularly
Walk the walk – lead by example. There is no more important factor in shaping and reinforcing the culture one envisions for an organization.

Are you thinking about what your company culture is? Is it a stimulus or a hindrance in achieving your business objectives? Are you taking steps to shape or change it? Are you walking the walk?

7. Consolidation

Setting aside my original business considerations, what strikes me most is how much consolidation has taken place across industries in the past decade: Disney/Fox, T-Mobile/Sprint, Amazon/Whole Foods, Microsoft/LinkedIn, and more. In media, speculation continues around smaller streaming services merging to compete with Netflix. As I noted earlier, the results of these deals are often mixed, especially from the consumer’s perspective.

As I write this, one of the top stories in today’s Wall Street Journal is: “Liberty’s John Malone Eyes Content Consolidation.” A few days ago, Intel’s nearly $17 billion acquisition of Altera was reverberating in the press. In that same vein, Broadcom was recently acquired for $37 billion as the chip market adjusts to a world dominated increasingly by Cloud computing and the rapid move by consumers to mobile devices. On a smaller scale, there was also the recent acquisition of the live-streaming app Periscope by Twitter. Compiling a list of recent examples of consolidation is not a difficult exercise.

For businesses of all sizes, consolidation is both an opportunity and a challenge. The change in competitive landscape often created by such combinations can create an instant threat to long-term growth or even viability. At the same time, for many firms, consolidation delivers an exit opportunity for companies, providing liquidity outside of the public markets. If your company is the acquirer, an acquisition can provide a source of technology and talent that can accelerate your strategic roadmap. Or it can create an integration nightmare where cultures clash, anticipated cost savings never materialize and the value of your enterprise quickly moves in the wrong direction. Words like “excitement” and “synergy” get replaced by terms like “sell-off” and “write down.”

It would appear that the key to all of this is a large dose of strategic self-awareness. For example, starting a business where consolidation is emerging as a trend can make sense if not pursued blindly. Can your company develop and offer enough tangible value to become a viable target of a well-funded player? Or, is competing in that category jumping into shark-filled waters? On the other side, is there really strategic value in the company you are considering buying? Think back to eBay’s acquisition of Skype and then later sale to Microsoft. Better yet, think Time-Warner/AOL, the apocalypse of attempted strategic consolidation.

Where does consolidation fit into your business strategy and the category in which it competes? Is it a problem or an opportunity? Are you potentially selling, buying, or competing?

8. Commitment

I’ve had the opportunity to mentor a number of entrepreneurs since I wrote my original comments. It really reinforced the importance of commitment in achieving success (however one defines it). It’s not about recklessness—it’s about clarity and conviction. Commitment has an important brethren which provides a good handoff point for a few additional “C words” that are also relevant upon reflection years later. (See below.)

This is an easy one to discuss but not to truly possess. Famously turning down $1 billion for your company – think Facebook or Snapchat – is, I suppose, a classic exercise in commitment. In a sense, for whatever ultimately results from those types of decisions, I believe one thing holds true. Leaders with a real sense of commitment don’t really lose either way. Wealth is certainly desired and welcomed, but the drive to create something different, something that has impact, something that may even change the world in some small or big way, often transcends the chase for financial rewards.

And when one looks out at the landscape of companies of all sizes – not just high-profile start-ups, but also Fortune 500 companies – it’s not too difficult to distinguish commitment from what is essentially greed, and who’s winning in the marketplace.

And Some New “C Words” for 2025

9. Courage

The thing that sustains commitment. It also means taking ethical stands, pivoting early, letting go of sacred cows, and listening.

10. Curation

As information overload appears to grow on a daily basis, the ability to simplify the complex and communicate it clearly is an enormously valuable skill.

11. Curiosity

This may be the secret sauce of not just success in business, but also of an interesting and meaningful life journey.

No list like this is ever really complete. What are your business words that start with “C”?

Featured image by Nikhil Mitra via Unsplash