Business is crazy………
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Business is crazy……
I cannot help but be reminded of the old Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. Well that we most certainly are – including it seems, the Chinese.
There is no doubt that Business is really taking some hard knocks. I see from the msnbc headlines that I get each day; another giant is going to the wall. Nortel has applied for bankruptcy protection. The other d ay I read that Barclays was going to lay off “1000’s”. The list is very, very long indeed and more than little depressing. Getting rid of staff (interesting word that - it means “support” in one way or another) is one of the traditional remedies that business has always followed. When it gets tough, business goes about the busyness of getting rid of what it has, until then, been calling its “greatest asset” (is there a CEO on the planet that does not say that, sometime, somewhere?) – it’s people. People are “fired” and there are people out there who make a very good living making sure that this is done as cheaply as is possible – always, of course, sticking strictly to the letter of the law! The great pundit Mr Jack Welch is on record as saying that at any given time some 10% of the workforce is not making that much contribution to the bottom line so they can safely be gotten rid of - fired. So when you have gotten rid of one lot of 10% you can presumably wait a little and then get rid of the next 10% - and so on - until you have no one left? Or must you hire again in the interim so that the 10% is always there?
These times are going to require different solutions and for so long as we do things the same old way we will get the same old result. This is insane and we are seeing the results of this insanity every day!
Nobody really knows for sure and there is a suggestion that the phrase “to be fired” was, once upon a time, a literal event. When your village, tribe or community was fed up with you for some reason or another, they drove you out of the community and “fired” your home – set fire to everything you owned. You were deprived of your means of livelihood. Drastic but simple and on the face of it effective. The community got rid of the irritation. The person concerned must have left in despair and bitterness - and likely led the next raiding party as it swept into the valley seeking revenge. An empty belly does not prompt a reasonable response. And the cycle is perpetuated. It is rather akin to amputating an arm because it fails to throw the ball where you want it to go. Insane.
Right now we are seeing similar insanity. Business is not doing business – or least not as much as it would like. So it “fires” people and these people are going back into society resentful, bitter, angry and will not be very good customers for whatever business business wants to do. Simply put. Business cannot do healthy business in an unhealthy society and this is precisely what business is busy creating – a very unhealthy society indeed. We see the pit looming and promptly get out the shovels to dig it deeper.
Is there another way? There always is and it is not always going to be the easy way. Rather than cutting the limb off because it does not behave the way we want it to why not do something about making the limb more efficient? Is there not a way of making the staff, in which considerable amounts of time effort and money have already been invested, more productive and more of a support?
Our staffs are business’s biggest asset and support system. Right now business needs to be investing even more in them to make them more productive and more efficient and better customers.
Want to engage in a conversation as to how? Drop us a line at cnevill@foundationsa.co.za and let us see what we can come up with. I believe it can be done and we will have to be bold - very bold.
Posted on January 17th, 2009 by christopher
Filed under: Uncategorized
Yes “business is crazy” but how and why? And what do we do about that? I certainly cannot talk for “buisness” but I can talk for aspects of “a business”. It is easy to sit back and watch the news or read the business section in the newspaper and sagely comment that “things must change”. To actually make that change is an enormous risk and a tricky business. To go against the tide and really work with how we as business owners we staff as “fireable”. Where does the concept come from and how did we absorb it in the first place - to view staff almost as a commodity that we can “fire” when they do not do as we wish. How do we operate against the tide when the Labour Laws tell us how we “must” be?
That “things” must change is obvious but to make that change and still survive to fulfill our many obligations is another question entirely. The other more obscure question is - do our staff want to change? Are they able to shift their perspectives on themselves and begin to imagine that they are not disposable and do we have what it takes to support them within that journey? Perhaps that is the real question and the where the measure of ourselves as “the bosses” will be found. What a risk.