Most executives or entrepreneurs that I talk to have elaborate growth strategies for boom times or the upturn in a business cycle but only a single approach/tactic in the reverse down leg or bust cycles- CUTS & LAYOFFS. Be they: executing layoffs, canceling previously signed contracts, killing product lines or leaning on clients to pay bills faster-they form a narrow mindset. Although necessary in many cases, they are not very creative nor original. In fact, this single-minded mono-strategic approach may be disastrous for your firm.
All baseball, football and basketball teams have set plays in their playbook roster (such as the flea flicker or the "Hail Mary" in football, or the bunt and double play in baseball) that they practice religously for unqiue circumstances in a game situation. The same logic doesn't seem to transfer into business situations for some reason. Funny that CEO's practice simulations for problem solving or crisis mitigation (ie, WMD, SARS or Avian Flu) but they don't spend nearly enough "thinking time" for opportunity recognition or opportunity design.
From the jargon in our Opportunity Clinic © ™ workshop, your Recession Playbook requires six sets of strategies and not just one.
- coping or surviving strategies for the down leg of a recession,
- coping or surviving strategies for the bottom of a recession, (it may stretch out to be a long one)
- opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the down leg of a recession,
- opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the bottom of a recession,
- opportunity-spotting or opportunity-designing strategies for the up leg of a recovery, and
- a cluster of "Hail Mary" strategies in case all bets are off and we head into an honest to goodness depression
The above opportunity windows will vary depending on what the recession / depression bottom looks like and the depth and breadth of the economic fall. As I've commented on this blog before, we could be facing a v-shaped bottom, a V-shaped bottom, a W-shaped bottom, a vW-shaped bottom, an L-shaped flat bottom or an extended L-shaped flat bottom. The Opportunity Clinic has over 300 generic Opportunity Scenarios or Windows that executives can use as templates to explore or design new "opportunity spaces" for their business to not just survive but thrive in a recession.
Newsweek supports this notion, writing this week:
“In theory, every manager should have the skills needed to guide companies through a recession, the way every baseball player is supposed to know how to bunt or steal a base.” …[but most don't]…"After spending their careers in single-minded pursuit of growth, business leaders have to adjust their mentality,"…[…]… "The new reality is that, barring acquisitions, [the average] company will be smaller two years from now than it is today."
If you are interested in extending your Recession Playbook, call us or email us (by clicking on my name in the signature below) to get more information about the Opportunity Clinic © ™.
Walter Derzko, Smart Economy, Toronto
Author of the soon-to-be-released book: Hard Times Golden Opportunities.. about opportunity recognition in a recession/ depression features 45 opportunity scenarios.
Related posts in this series:
Related Posts over that past year:
· Opportunity Recognition in Difficult Times
· Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn
· Recession - Proofing your Business - Spotting & Designing Opportunities in a Downturn – June 25, 2008, Ontario College of Art Design, Toronto, ON
· Recession-Proofing your Business-Strategies and Tactics for smoother sailing in turbulent seas
· Master Class in Opportunity Recognition for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs> May 30th 2008> University of Toronto
· Turning Misery into Opportunity
· Vacuum leaves pullout opportunities;
· How will baby boomers handle the recession? Zoomers, Doomers, Gloomers, Opportuneurs
· Recession, Depression and Shortages as Opportunities
· Restructuring of American Business-A New Business Model?
· Using New Yorker Cartoons for Opportunity Recognition /Sense-making & Pattern Recognition
· Text Mining for S&T Scouting, Foresight and Opportunity Recognition
· The Opportunity Clinic-swapping opportunity scenarios 08-002
© 2005-2009
Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©
Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "
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- ".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
- ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
- ".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought." --A. Einstein
- ".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko
- ".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead
- ".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon
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