Não é o que nos acontece que conta, é a forma como decidimos encarar o que nos acontece

Continuando a nossa leitura de "Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink" de Jonathan Byrnes.
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"Recession Opportunities":
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"Recession; is this the worst of times or the best of times?

The answer is both. Difficult times bring difficult problems to all managers, but they also create rare opportunities for renewing change.
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Consider cost-cutting. In recession, revenues fall, cash is depleted, and stock prices plummet. In most companies, the instinctive reaction is “all hands on deck” cutting costs. The problem with cost-cutting, however, is two-fold: managers often do it wrong, and cost-cutting is not enough.
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Managers charged with cost-cutting in recessionary times all too often focus inordinately on short-term incremental gains, and miss major strategic opportunities.
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What are the implications for cost-cutting? It means that there is a bad way and a good way to cut costs.
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The bad way is to cut across the board (“let’s get inventory and travel expenses down…”). The good way is to look very carefully at your company and identify the winners and losers in terms of profitability and growth potential. The key is to shift resources systematically from the losers to the winners.
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This will enable you to lock in and nurture the profitable portion of your business, and to find and land more high-potential business. In the vernacular, you should “shoot one, promote one.”
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Opportunity for change
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It turns out that economic difficulties present a critical opportunity to drive progressive change in a company.
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When my readers confirmed that the profitability pattern I wrote about was so widespread, I called a number of top executives to ask a simple question, “Why aren’t you doing anything about it?”
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The answer varied a bit from individual to individual, but the essence was the same: it’s too hard to move a company to change when it’s doing well. This was a dilemma. It was very hard for executives to execute fundamental change, even when they knew that it would create major lasting improvements.
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Recession changes all of this. It is ironic that difficult economic times present one of the most important opportunities to drive renewing change in a company. In difficult times, with the company in jeopardy, managers throughout the company are very worried. It is precisely at this time that they will be most receptive to initiatives and change. Importantly, the same is true for customers and suppliers."
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Claro que quem recorre a apoios e subsídios adia a necessidade de se re-inventar. Recordo sempre o caso da Pirelli e a introdução de "Confronting Reality" de Larry Bossidy e Ram Charan:
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“To confront reality is to recognize the world as it is, not as you wish it to be, and have the courage to do what must be done, not what you’d like to do.”
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"The most widespread unrealistic behavior when the game changes drastically is to violate the First Law of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging). People redouble their efforts to do waht they know best. They often achieve heroic results - which are, alas, almost as often pointless, because they fail to confront the new realities.”