In the coming year these are the top 5 concerns every business leader should consider if they are interested in success:
1) Although it seems intuitive to “hunker down” and wait out the economy until it turns the corner, it is the worst thing you can do in a competitive business environment. While your company is stagnating a competitor is strategizing, developing, and implementing new products and services to improve their business. It could be a recently downsized employee (s), it could be a small firm not yet on your radar screen, or another business that decides to expand into a new sector of business where they see opportunity. While you “sleep” the competition is taking the business you are not serving while waiting for the economy to rebound. The rebound will happen but you may be in a very different position to take advantage of it if you have sat on the sidelines for too long.
2) As the numbers get tight, many management teams start the uncomfortable conversations of reducing “headcount”. They are really people but management uses this term to feel better. The fatal blow comes not to the employee but often the organization. The most experienced, high paid employees usually are the most valuable as well. The knowledge and understanding of your products, services and customers is critical to future opportunities for growth, and experienced employees if utilized correctly can help drive a strategy to grow even in difficult economic times. They often can do multiple jobs compared to a junior employee and they are often the most loyal to a company when treated fairly. If you choose to downsize these employees not only will you hurt your ability to operate, you hurt your ability to survive the future. If you have to reduce people you need to do a comprehensive analysis of the people and positions from every department. You can’t say I need to cut 2 heads from every department, that’s crazy. You need to look at the workload and people to match them with skills and needs. Most likely that will mean keeping your most experienced and value based employees. And remember, most start-ups are founded by employees of organizations that let them go or allowed for disengagement to set in. These employees tend to know all of the warts of their previous employer and the most valuable and profitable customers.
3) In a similar vein, the elimination of internal programs that support the employee’s ability to do their job more effectively is counter- productive. When the economy is tight and you need less people doing more work you should make sure you are helping these employees with some sort of training support. Be creative and let your teams come up with programs that work for them. At a time when employees are nervous about their jobs, getting them more involved will help reduce their stress level and become more engaged. The numbers are as high as 85% of workers are only staying where they are until the economy gets better. By getting them involved to be part of a solution you will be able to gauge employee interactions to know who is at risk and who is waiting for the economy to turn.
4) Technology advances are happening at light speed and many of these advances can help increase customer engagement, employee engagement, improve efficiencies, increase revenue or all of the above. Do not make blanket policy to eliminate all technology upgrades or purchases. New companies to your market can take these new technology advances and implement them without the legacy systems more mature organizations often have to deal with. This can be a huge competitive advantage to the start- up firm. Every business leader must remain engaged with the technology vendors if only to understand what these technologies can do to make their competitors more successful. Leaders must be willing to fight for technology investments that keep them competitive and efficient no matter what the economic environment is. Companies with the best technology integrations will lead in 2012.
5) Review all of your current strategic initiatives on a regular basis to insure the dynamics have not changed since you first decided on that strategy. Things are moving at light speed even in tough economic times. Don’t be lulled into doing nothing because you think everybody else is doing nothing. I will guarantee you there are many people plotting their success to take advantage of the economic malaise. Remember that some of the most successful businesses have started in the most difficult economic times. The leaders that are most aggressive and strategic in the worst economic times are going to be the leaders of the next Microsoft, Fed Ex, HP, Burger King, to name a few companies that started in recessions.
In 2012 the business climate will be blurred with the political realities of a Presidential election cycle. Executives can be easily distracted from the real economics and focus too much on the short term fluctuations of a very volatile period. Executive and managers must know their business sector and plan accordingly. The economy will not stop although it may be portrayed that way. People are still going to do business but they will be discriminating with all of the options they have. Mobile retail, social retail, insurance, transportation, energy, healthcare, government, consumer goods, are all going to continue to happen.
The question is: will you be ready to compete for the business in 2012?