Is there any right way to downsize?

It is a well known fact that organizations who have not treated their employees well during the downturn are now finding difficult to recruit good people and in fact have started loosing people who are leaving them for greener pastures. So much is written about this topic but still very few manage this well. I firmly believe that employees should always be treated with dignity, fairness and respect. Management should be more visible in such situations and should not go into hiding. They should help people find new jobs by leveraging their personal networks and should avoid doing only a lip service. Downsizing if not done properly, will definitely dent the long term prospects of an organization.

Do we know our Vocation?

Many people who are just starting their careers simply don’t have any vision for themselves. Does it not make sense for us to visualize what we intend to do before we start our professional careers? Vocation is the biggest concept which incorporates our purpose, mission, and calling or is something unique to each one of us which will define our legacy. It is the beacon in our life that keeps us headed in the right direction even when we are being tossed around by fate. Then comes your career which is a subset of your vocation. If we understand our calling, we can have different calling along the way without redirecting our paths. For example if you have a desire to help others then you can fully embrace that as a teacher, author, politician etc. Job is the smallest of the three concepts and the least significant. It describes how we earn a living and perhaps what we are currently doing between 9:00am to 6:00pm. We tend to focus too narrowly on our jobs. Thus, if the job disappears, the immediate response can be that of diminished self-worth and questioned identity. However if we are paying attention, times of change can wake us up to our dreams. Life experience is a wonderful teacher and clarifier. The key is not to loose sight of your vocation.

Is it value for money?

Smart companies perceive not just threats in recession but also opportunities. In fact during the great depression companies like GE, Kellogg and P&G outmaneuvered their rivals. They grew by delivering products/services that enabled hard hit customers to do more with the same resources. Cost innovation and not cost cutting is the order of the day. The idea of innovating to provide offerings that provide greater or same functionality but at a lower price is unconventional. However smart companies in emerging markets are doing that to appeal to the great mass of value conscious customers by selling high tech products at mass market prices, by offering choice and customization to value customers and turning premium niches into mass market. All conventional wisdom has been turned upside down.

Provocation based selling

Sales professionals generally wonder what they need to do to sell their products or services in a downturn when companies are not ready to spend any extra money. In fact in these circumstances the influencers would have changed and may not be the same people with whom you are in touch with. To begin a provocation based sale you need to do three things. Identify a problem that will resonate with the line executive in the target organization. Develop a provocative point of view of that problem that naturally links to your solution and lodge that provocation with the decision maker who can take the necessary action. The problem should have sufficient weight so that money can be spent to fix it. This problem should bother the CEO and must be keeping him awake all night. The above steps if done properly will even lessen the sales cycle. The above method has been taken from a management consultant approach who is trained to look for problems which are so complex that clients remained challenged by them and then develop original points of view about them.

Can we define Innovative organization?

What makes an organization innovative is debatable but there are some attributes which can differentiate an innovative organization from others. Some of these are as under:-

1. Freedom which is visible when a team member is empowered to try new approach to his/her work.
2. Trust which shows when members share their ideas with one another with openness.
3. Humor when people do their work and have fun too.
4. Idea support when members encourage each other ideas.
5. Debate when they constructively challenge each other ideas and approaches.
6. When there is less of conflict and interpersonal issues.
7. When members have time to think about new ideas and new ways to problem solving.
8. When members can take action in case of risk

It is the responsibility of the leader to oversee the change towards innovation and to use all his resources to make his organization more innovative. He can choose persons with potential and can make them attend leadership trainings which can be arranged in-house or from outside to instill a culture of innovation. One should always remember that when we are talking about culture change the time frame most certainly goes up from days to years and this becomes most important factor to gauge a CEO’s performance.

The Right Transition

In one’s professional life one always faces transition where one may be asked to lead a new project within a strategic business unit or you may be transitioning from a smaller role in a bigger organization to a bigger role in a startup company. How one approaches such transitions become very important for one’s success or failure.

In a startup situation the challenge is to build the structures, systems and strategy from scratch without any clear framework, recruiting and building a high performance team and all but with limited resources. In a situation where you have been told to save a business acknowledged being in deep trouble the challenges are to re-energize the demoralized employees and stakeholders, making effective decisions under time pressure and going deep enough with painful cuts and difficult choices. In case of managing a rapidly expanding business the challenges are to put structures and systems in place for effective scaling and integrating many new employees. In case of re-energizing a previous successful organization that now faces problems the challenge is to convince employees that change is necessary and carefully restructuring the organization. And in case you are in a situation where you have to sustain success where you are told to hold a position by a very successful leader then the challenge is to manage the team the leader has created and also have to find the ways to take the company to the next level. In many cases the challenges may be a mix of the above for which the challenges and to-do list will vary