My friends, as we look forward to 2008, understand that January 2009 will be a very different landscape. And we have twelve months to prepare. While Investor’s Business Daily proclaims we are teetering on a recession, that teetering point is still some months away. This is not a time for panic, but a time for preparation.
Lee Thayer, (Leadership 2004), speaks about necessity and its importance in the workplace. The entrepreneur, who starts a business, only puts in place that which is necessary. Only necessary equipment is purchased. Only necessary people are hired.
As time advances, and the business becomes more complex, necessity becomes more complex. And management decisions are made to bring on more infrastructure to support that complexity. Sometimes those decisions are accurate; sometimes those decisions miss the mark.
During this next year of preparation, look around. Re-think your work-flow. Re-think your personnel structure. Carefully examine what your customer wants, to make sure what you deliver is necessary.
Over the next few weeks, I will share with you economic insights to help you prepare. Those of you connected to residential housing are already working hard to survive in a recessionary climate. For those, thankfully, outside that environment, who think you have dodged a bullet, pay attention. January 2009 will be a very different landscape. -TF
These are paralyzing thoughts- essential but really scary. They are made even more frightening, especially for small business entrepreneurs, because of an additional problem: you can’t do everything.
I often get advise from experts telling me I need to study my market better, test products at their early stages etc. But the problem with that is that if I invested money and time in research I would have less money to invest in products and marketing- and the truth is that past a certain point, it’s often not the quality of the product that sells or fails a business- it’s the marketing…
I vote for focus: to know what is the most critical path that will bring in business and investing all resources there.
What do you think?
Hi, Reut,
Yes, things are going to get scary. However, those who are prepared will survive, and the other side of this recession (beginning mid 2010) will find a growing and robust economy. This is not the end of the world. This is a normal business cycle, but it will have the depth of the 1980’s recession.