Dangerous Opportunity

“When writ­ten in Chi­nese, the word “cri­sis” is com­posed of two char­ac­ters — one rep­re­sents dan­ger, and the other rep­re­sents oppor­tu­nity.” John F. Kennedy

It is unusual to be able to cap­ture and to retain the atten­tion of any group of peo­ple, much less an entire nation. But the cur­rent eco­nomic cri­sis is so com­pletely per­va­sive and so threat­en­ing, it is impact­ing every level of our society. Fortunately, like all cycli­cal defla­tion­ary and infla­tion­ary events, this cri­sis it will come to an end, and a depres­sive envi­ron­ment will give way to opti­mism, to invest­ment and to rapid growth.

The ques­tion is … What do we do in the mean­time? … and… How do we pre­pare for a “dif­fer­ent” future?

Opti­mism or Pessimism?

“Wel­come every prob­lem as an oppor­tu­nity. Each moment is the great chal­lenge, the best thing that ever hap­pened to you. The more dif­fi­cult the prob­lem, the greater the chal­lenge in work­ing it out.” Grace Speare

This may seem a strange state­ment to make … while this may be the tough­est econ­omy you have ever done busi­ness in, it is also the most unique oppor­tu­nity you may ever have to enact fast, effec­tive and last­ing pro­duc­tive change!

Right now peo­ple are not just wor­ried about pay, ben­e­fits, and pen­sions, they are deeply con­cerned about job secu­rity, avoid­ing fore­clo­sure, and keep­ing their fam­ily secure. While you may feel uncom­fort­able at what may appear to be exploit­ing a cri­sis, real­ity dic­tates we must seize every oppor­tu­nity to sur­vive and to even­tu­ally pros­per. Fear of fail­ure may not be the kind­est moti­va­tor, but our choices are severely limited.

We can stand still and fail or move for­ward and fight for suc­cess. Given the level of fear and worry it should be obvi­ous that an aggres­sive improve­ment plan of action is just the reas­sur­ance and the dis­trac­tion the work­force needs.

Seize the Future

“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regret­fully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” Alexan­der Gra­ham Bell

The tra­di­tional approach to an eco­nomic down­turn is to obvi­ously cut costs, but even if you do, what hap­pens when the econ­omy turns around? You sim­ply add these costs again, but you will not have made any progress in an econ­omy which will cer­tainly be more demand­ing than the one we strug­gled in before!

Even before this eco­nomic down­turn there was a grow­ing con­sen­sus in our indus­try that change was nec­es­sary, it was inevitable, and it was long over­due. In the past the con­se­quences of ignor­ing the neces­sity of con­tin­u­ous change were debat­able, but not now! There is a win­dow of oppor­tu­nity but it will nar­row very rapidly.

Category: Organization, Planning