It’s curious how strategic plans rarely allow for the seismic changes that may profoundly affect an organisation. How many well-considered business plans envisaged unprecedented energy prices, the demise of major financial institutions or heavyweight US government intervention in the workings of the free market?
We all know that we have lived through an exceptionally long and heady economic cycle and that we now need to re-think all those plans based on our aspirations and best judgments for the future. We are faced with disruption and discontinuity and seeking orientation in a new political and economic landscape.
So how come most organisations we talk to seem to have no better strategy that cutting costs or ‘keeping our heads down’? Why are short-term considerations still dominating corporate thinking when it’s pretty clear that short-termism played a major role in the events that have fractured Wall Street and the City and are sending aftershocks through the High Street and into every home?
The immediate instincts and received wisdom will be to slash and burn: cut costs, preserve the illusion of firm management and short-term profitability. This will be the time to let go of irreplaceable people, to cut back on research and development and to can the advertising. Counter-cycle theorists will struggle to be heard despite the growing weight of evidence in their favour.
For many organisations, drastic downsizing may seem to be the only choice although it would be good if the marketers, HR managers, product developers and strategic planners were given at least a few days to offer creative options to the strident calls for cuts from the finance department and, ironically, the bankers. Could this be a time to consider economic, social and environmental sustainability?
We can all wait for outside pressures to change the way we think and act – or, if we are spectacularly incompetent with our shareholders’ funds, we can hope that the taxpayer has enough left spare cash to bail us out after paying his gas bill. Alternatively, we can use this time to drive positive change from within. This could be the moment to make the best of your human and physical assets to put yourself in control of change rather than at its mercy.
Not surprisingly, at Change Agency, change is our business. Low overheads, no debt and a wealth of talent have put us in good shape to help public, private and voluntary sector organisations to develop a positive agenda while others are still adjusting their tin helmets in the bunker or waiting for the Treasury to come riding to the rescue.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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1 comments:
I agree with your observations. The economic landscape is rarely driven by neat financial conditions and formulae. War, terrorism, health scares and natural disasters are more likely causes for financial meltdown and its painful after effects, but we seem to learn very little from past experience to apply to the latest crisis. The cost cutters move in and strip what they can to improve the bottom line, employees, shareholders and tax payers share the pain, but the route back to growth rarely builds in the factors to limit the prospect of it all happening again. Imbalance and greed is an obvious fault line that is never properly addressed or dealt with but this goes hand in hand with grand macro plans that are almost never thought through or successfully integrated into public or company cultures. Once again we seem to be witnessing a lack of joined up thinking; government to industry to employee to consumer. The failure to see all component parts as not just desirable but necessary to future survival, let alone prosperity, makes me think we are just providing the conditions for the next repeat cycle.
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