Here is a piece of an article that I copied and pasted from Fortune Magazine for you. For the entire article, I have included the link at the bottom.
Keep investing in the core.
Recessions end, and much of the art of recession management involves remembering that fact. When this lousy stretch is over, will your business be more competitive or less? The most successful companies never stop funding their most critical competencies - product innovation, customer service, or anything else.
Kohl’s, the big retailer, actually spent more on marketing this past holiday season than it did last year. Intuit’s Smith says, “We’re not going to cut innovation. This company for 25 years has been fueled by new-product innovation. We’re protecting the innovation pipeline so we come out of this strong.” For virtually all companies, a critical part of the core is the continual development of employees. Yet it’s remarkable how many businesses cut training and development in a downturn. The best never do.
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
I’m sorry, Corry, but I don’t buy your construct any more than I buy the euphemism that we’re in a recessionary bubble or some such bafflegab.
We’re seeing a socioeconomic cataclysm similar to that which wiped the dinosaurs from the planet and triggered a series of climate changes that forced the human species to leave the African veldt. It will wipe out entire sectors of the economy without a trace. Does anyone believe for a moment that it will be business as usual in three months, six months, a year?
As they die, businesses will cut. As they cut, their core employees will either leave or die under the load. Our welfare state makes it advantageous to jump from job to job, but I expect that will change when Canada tables its first $100 billion deficit budget.
Sorry to rain on your parade, but you’ll recall who survived the last few Ice Ages. Yep, the small, warm-blooded furry mammals. Now if we can model the business version of that little critter, we’re golden.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Thank you!
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
Sorry, Jim, but I don’t buy the weather-as-economic-predictor metaphor at ALL. For one, humans did not exist back then, nor did the technology to predict (and thus mitigate) not only the events of which you speak, but their after-effects. Secondly, and this is the gaping hole in your logic, the economy is a human construct, unlike the weather or seismic changes, which are huge, sudden, and most importantly, random and unpredictable.
The cataclysmic effect of economic (or meteorological) events is always best viewed in hindsight. The extinction of the dinosaurs is at best an intelligently hypothesized theory. Not so with the current economic upheaval, which will be investigated, analyzed and micro-managed until things get better.
History isn’t always a swipe of the eraser across a crowded chalkboard. We already are the small, furry mammals.