Last week I had a conversation with a VP of the local office of an international ad agency in Europe. The topic was, no surprise, “the situation”. We started with some obvious observations such as:
a. Everyone is worried
b. No one knows what will happen
c. Their CEO had just emailed to stop all expenses immediately so they don’t know if they will be allowed to engage in a project
d. Next year all their clients will probably advertise less, so they are afraid that billings will drop and they will have to fire people.
But then we moved on to some other points, some obvious as well and some less (to me, at least) about the opportunities (no cynicism, this time) inherent in the crisis:
a. Clients will be more in need than ever to get ideas and help from anyone, including their agency. This is the time to start offering more brains to the clients.
b. Some agencies may not survive, so this is an opportunity to win clients, even if at the moment they will not spend much.
c. For a while there may be less work, so finally there will be time to dedicate to thinking and training and all the good important less-urgent stuff that in regular times no one has time to do.
d. They may need to fire people, but the people who do stay will form the nucleus of the agency’s future. In these people they should invest seriously to make sure they stay when good times return.
e. Since they probably can’t afford to keep working exactly as they did before, this is the time to apply innovation to see how they can innovate on their own processes. This may be crucial for their survival if times change dramatically.
f. There will probably be fewer pitches for new business in the coming months. This means that each pitch will be more important and thus will justify a bigger investment to make sure they win it.
g. Clients will have smaller budgets to spend, but competition on consumer’s money will become fiercer (since their budgets will also shrink). This means that there will be a strong need for alternative ways of communicating, and for communications that grab the attention of an even more suspicious public.
After the conversation ended, I thought about all this both from the specific point of view of our offering, and through the prism of a manager of any business.
For us, in SIT. We help people make themselves and their companies more innovative. So it is obvious, from everything mentioned above, that the need for our services rises in terms of crisis, rather than declining. This doesn’t mean necessarily that those in need will be aware of the fact, or, if conscious, have the guts to admit it and invest in learning to change their way of doing business. But it does mean that we are in a good position to help.
For businesses in general. The main learning for me, as manager of a business is the need to control the (hysterical) reflex of curling up and entering into defensive, cost-cutting, lets-wait-and-see mode. Not easy, when all the advice you hear is cautionary, but so important if one wants to come out of this crisis better and stronger.
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How true is that an opportunity exists. May be the key is how could it be communicated to managers.
The bathtub metaphor could help: One could increase or sustain the water level (strategic resources of the firm) by tighting the drainage (cutting costs, etc), or by increasing the flow of the shower (investing in learning , change in thinking, etc).
In addition, by increasing the shower flow, the organizational climate will be generative and appreciative. By closing the drainage, the culture for managers will become reactive and focused on the negative.
Be well,
Fabian.
Interesting. yet, in some respects, it’s as if claiming that a war is a good thing because:
1. people will die so the ones that will be left will have more options and less competition.
2. at the end of the war there will be good times for re-building that will bring more business opportunities.
3. during a war there are less car accidents, crime and other crisis…
To cut the long story short, very few companies will truly adopt the mindset presented in this article while the majority will suffer the dark side of war.
hi Tom
Regarding your (somewhat sinister) metaphor, what i am doing is not arguing in favor of war, but rather arguing that one shouldnt resign oneself: a) to the inevitability of war, and b) to despair because there is or will be a war.
But additionally and more importantly - and as i promise to argue more at length in an upcomming post - the metaphor is a bit flawed because the most important aspect of the “crisis” is that to a large extent it is brought upon through a vicious circle of “worries about the crisis”.
If enough people will find opportunities in the crisis and act accordingly, there will not be a full fledged crisis at all.
thanks for pointing out the need for a clarification
Amnon
Very insightful.
Read “Innovation Tools” blog for an intersting response for this post:
http://www.innovationtools.com/Weblog/innovationblog-detail.asp?ArticleID=1206&page=1
Here is an interesting trend analysis for the current context.
http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/#Q1 (Question #1, at the end)
Fabian
Hi Amnon,
very interesting and a very well written piece. we are now in the “gray” times, where nothing is clear and you have to “feel” your way like a blind person from month to month. in order to survive the business will have to tighten the drainage (so there is enough to pay the salaries) AND periodically open the tap for very short intervals (also depends on the exchange rate…)AND find the innovative ideas to change and adjust to the crisis but also to the “new” times after it. if you may, they will need a stick to steer the water in the bathtab so they don’t become stale,
dash, Eran