If Google's 7% stock swoon Tuesday stuck you as deja vu, you're right.  But it wasn't a  Wall Street replay.

Think, Italy.  Torino, to be precise. 

Bode Miller's spectacular flop at the Winter Olympics was just as great a failure at the expectations game as Google's admission earlier this week that "growth will slow."  It was spectacular.  It was awful.  And it was reality.  The problem is this -- the expectations game is one that can't be won forever.  Eventually, it will eat up anyone who dares to play.

We live in a superstar society.  We expect greatness, again and again.  Whether we're talking about growth stocks like Microsoft, AOL and Home Depot or Olympians like Carl Lewis, Mark Spitz and Eric Heiden, we want to see gold.  Reasonable or not.

The truly great athletes always seem to find ways to deliver.  When they can't, they retire. 

And there's the problem.  Companies can't retire.

Unless they give up entirely and go private or merge, public companies cannot step down at the top.  They must grow and age until they're no longer able to post the kind of numbers the Street is looking for.  Then, they start to slide.  They turn into GE or, gasp, IBM. 

So what should we, who are expected to communicate these realities, do when our charges start to slow down? 

Like Google, we're first got to admit we're getting older ... and then come up with a plan for rejuvenation.  Communicate that plan, and then find ways to measure the progress we are making.  That was the problem with the Google news.  The company didn't show a lot of precision in discussing where new growth would come from.  And that was enough to send investors racing away. 

If only Bode Miller had moved that fast.