Weekly Management Tips
“Failures are not fatal unless we go to sleep with them, Edison, Marconi, Cyrus, Field, Lincoln, Grant all had their failures, but each of them kept on undaunted until he ‘won-out’.”
~ Anon
There are basically two attitudes you can take as a manager, executive or business owner during a slow economy or when it goes into the tank – you can:
- lay people off
- cut back on employee training and development (ouch)
- complain about how bad things are (is that working for you?)
- put all new creative initiatives on the back burner
- cut prices and extend terms (bad long term startegy)
- close – offices, plants, outlets or other facilities (maybe you should have done it years ago)
- there’s a whole lot more but I’m confident you know what they are…
The natural and usual consequences of these actions will have both a short and long term negative impact on your competitive position in the market place, employee morale, employee’s (the ones that are left) effectiveness, customer satisfaction and loyalty and the general health and well being of your organization in the months and/or years ahead.
Or, you can:
- re-evaluate polices, procedures and strategies that may not be working
- eliminate products and/or services that are no longer in anyone’s best interest.
- find creative ways to keep employees motivated and productive
- improve employees skill levels and attitudes with increased training
- find creative ways to get better, stronger, faster and more effective as an organization
- terminate employee ‘deadwood’ that you have put off for whatever reason
- spend more time planning and creative thinking than in a funk
- hire an outside consultant to help you evaluate: policies, procedures, marketing plans, promotion efforts, sales strategies, competitive position in the market place, and anything else that might need to be improved, trashed or changed.
Each of these two distinct attitudes brings with it either: greater health and continued success, effectiveness and prosperity or increased weakness and vulnerability when the economy returns to the positive side, and it always has and always will. I firmly believe that these times are necessary so that an organization takes a closer look at what they are doing, how they are doing it and what is working and what isn’t. Managers, business owners and executives tend not to look at many of these issues when the money keeps rolling in the front door in truck loads and customers are beating down your doors.