Recessão, descentralizaçao e estratégia

"Winter is coming: Inverted yield curves, rising interest rates, and a rash of layoff announcements have convinced many economists that the global economy is headed for a downturn. Recessions are bad for business, but downturns are not destiny.

The worst of times for the economy as a whole can be the best of times for individual companies to improve their fortunes. One study found that lagging companies are twice as likely to overtake industry leaders during a recession, relative to nonrecessionary periods. Another study, of nearly 4,000 global companies before, during, and after the Great Recession, found that the top decile of companies grew earnings by 17% per year during the downturn, while the laggards saw profits stagnate or decline. The difference between the companies in the two groups translated into $6 billion in enterprise value on average.

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How can the same recession cause some corporate empires to rise and others to fall? The short answer is that uncertainty surges dramatically during recessions - increasing roughly threefold at the company level compared with the relative calm before or after a downturn.

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The chaos of a recession, however, is both a pit and a ladder. In the face of uncertainty, some companies retrench. They abandon attractive customers and promising markets, offload valuable assets at fire sales, cut prices, and seek new partners to bolster cash flow. Others start climbing. They seize opportunities and improve their fortunes.

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The link between decentralized decision-making and agility during a downturn was confirmed in a global sample of more than 3,000 midsized manufacturing companies during the Great Recession. It found that companies that centralized important decisions (capital expenditure, new products, sales and marketing, and hiring) suffered revenue declines three times larger than the losses experienced by decentralized companies.

Decentralization works only if distributed leaders understand the broader strategic context that is, which priorities matter most to the company, why they are important, and how the company is performing. When middle managers and front-line supervisors understand the broader strategic context, they can adapt to local circumstances without losing sight of the company's overall strategic priorities.

Clearly comunicating strategy is particularly important in turbulent times. 

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Heading into a recession, top management teams should commit to a handful of strategic priorities that provide clear guidance for navigating through the coming storm, and then ensure that those priorities are understood and used to guide choices throughout the organization. In an earlier study, we analyzed 69 factors to see which ones predicted whether managers and employees at all levels understood strategy. Two factors stood head and shoulders above the rest: that top leaders clearly and consistently communicated strategy, and that distributed leaders at every level explicitly linked their team's objectives to the overall strategy."

Trechos retirados de "Preparing Your Company for the Next Recession" 

Recessão? - Para reflexão

"What should a company do when recession is a close possibility?.
A recession pushes most managers out of their comfort zone.  Managers’ intuition about markets’ direction dives and their fear level surges.  Every organization suffers the reaction of clients and suppliers to the coming recession.
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It takes time to understand the actual impact of a recession. Until that time hysteria and limited intuition frequently cause major mistakes.
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Common practice is to cut cost. Warning: This common practice takes management’s focus away from the one parameter they must not hurt: sales!  To survive a recession a company must, as much as possible, protect sales revenue. We don’t claim that reducing cost is not important or critical to survival, but managers should carefully analyze their situation to ensure they do not disrupt their sales more than the recession  does. They must be careful to not make the recession’s damage worse.
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Can we make reliable estimates of the extent of reduced demand? Can we make reliable estimates of the extent of price reductions? We cannot!.
All decisions are based on forecasts that are mostly intuitive, sometimes quantitative or a combination.  Forecasts are always based on the past with assumptions on how past behavior will change.  Management practice of treating forecasts as deterministic is the core problem behind erratic decisions over demand. A single number will never be reality – the best we can do is estimate a range and prepare to respond quickly as reality becomes clearer.  A valid way is to define a range from the conservative to the optimistic assessment. Both estimates should be reasonable; put aside possible results with a very low probability.
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Probably all managers realize that in their market final consumer behavior is critical.  Consumers dictate demand.  Consumers’ demand impacts all players in a supply or value chain. For some value chains or positions in the value chain the recession’s impact may be somewhat delayed.  It is essential that B2B organizations extend their evaluation beyond their immediate clients. In order to predict the evolution of demand they must evaluate what is likely to happen to the demand all along the chain starting from the final consumer.  Suppliers to retail organizations might suffer a very high drop in sales at the beginning of the recession.  However, the real drop in sales to the end consumers is usually much smaller.  Nevertheless the retailers decide to reduce inventories.  For suppliers this means demand is likely to return back quite soon. Understanding clients and their clients’ business well is an essential capability for every organization in a value chain. This capability is not only critical in a recession – it is always a critical competency to understand clients’ needs even better than they do!"

Trechos retirados de "Preparing for a recession"

Prepare-se!

Estou a escrever estas linhas antes de sair para uma caminhada matinal arriscada, está a chover, onde vou ler um artigo que me enviaram ontem. A mensagem principal é: antecipe!

Antecipe a entrada no mundo digital, enquanto a sua sobrevivência é assegurada pelo retalho tradicional.

Nos últimas semanas já devo ter lido mais de 10 títulos onde a palavra recessão aparece. E isso já é um indicador avançado de algo. Quem me conhece sabe que vaticino um 2020 doloroso economicamente, sobretudo para quem vive do mercado interno.

2019 vai ser penoso para o PS, 2020 vai ser penoso para os portugueses https://t.co/LOvSUOMnAG

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) March 3, 2019

Fundamental a vitória do PS em 2019, para ter de lidar com recessão europeia e lixo debaixo do tapete em 2020 https://t.co/CZaCzetU81 já comprei as pipocas

— Carlos P da Cruz (@ccz1) October 7, 2018

Por isso, recomendo aos empresários das PMEs que leiam todos os artigos que possam encontrar sobre esta temática "How to Survive a Recession and Thrive Afterward".

Façam como as vacas, leiam e ruminem sobre a coisa. Ruminem para destilar o que será relevante para o caso de cada um. Alguns tópicos:

"during the recessions of 1980, 1990, and 2000, 17% of the 4,700 public companies they studied fared particularly badly: They went bankrupt, went private, or were acquired. But just as striking, 9% of the companies didn’t simply recover in the three years after a recession—they flourished, outperforming competitors by at least 10% in sales and profits growth. A more recent analysis by Bain using data from the Great Recession reinforced that finding. The top 10% of companies in Bain’s analysis saw their earnings climb steadily throughout the period and continue to rise afterward. A third study, by McKinsey, found similar results.
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The difference maker was preparation. Among the companies that stagnated in the aftermath of the Great Recession, “few made contingency plans or thought through alternative scenarios,” according to the Bain report. “When the downturn hit, they switched to survival mode, making deep cuts and reacting defensively.” Many of the companies that merely limp through a recession are slower to recover and never really catch up.
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Decentralized firms were better able to adjust to changing conditions.
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How should a company prepare in advance of a recession and what moves should it make when one hits? Research and case studies examining the Great Recession shed light on those questions. In some cases, they cement conventional wisdom; in others, they challenge it. Some of the most interesting findings deal with four areas: debt, decision making, workforce management, and digital transformation. The underlying message across all areas is that recessions are a high-pressure exercise in change management, and to navigate one successfully, a company needs to be flexible and ready to adjust."

E esta?!

Miguel Cadilhe falou à meses de recessão, na altura, neste postal perguntámos:
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Talvez Cadilhe esteja a falar para o português médio? Talvez Cadilhe antecipe uma borrasca que aí vem? Talvez Cadilhe use linguagem figurada? Talvez Cadilhe sinta que precisamos de uma política diferente para sair da Portuguese-trap? (nunca vi ou ouvi este termo ser usado pelo mainstream português!)
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Pois bem, o termo começa a ser usado abertamente na imprensa, como refere o Público de hoje "Travagem da economia continuou em Abril", assinado por Sérgio Aníbal:
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"Perigo de recessão técnica?" ... "aumentando os receios em relação a uma travagem mais grave da economia portuguesa e fazendo regressar o receio de ocorrência de uma recessão técnica." ... "entre dizer que uma recessão técnica é possível e dizer que é provável ainda vai um grande passo." (pois eu digo: entre nem se falar de recessão técnica até se questionar a possibilidade da sua ocorrência, vai um grande passo ainda maior)
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Sorte: o espaço onde a preparação encontra a oportunidade

Em linha com as "inevitáveis surpresas" do postal anterior; o que é que quem está no retalho está a fazer, está a planear, para fazer face aos tempos de borrasca?
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Este artigo do The New York Times "Recession Diet Just One Way to Tighten Belt " traça um retrato da mudança de comportamentos nos Estados Unidos.