Summary: The United States recession we are experiencing is not unlike summer break when we were in school. Fewer external demands are dictating our schedules. How you utilize your “free time” will affect your success both now and when “school” starts again.
I have to admit it – I was a terrible student in High School, and not much better in my early college years. Somehow, in my Junior year of college I experience a sudden awakening that permanently changed my attitude and approach to life and its demands. I wish I could remember just what it was that caused the shift but, alas, the memory of those years is failing. What I do know is that whatever it was, it greatly contributed to my successes throughout my Master’s program and later career.
Throughout recorded history, the US has averaged one recession every decade. They tend to last about 10-12 months.
We are officially experiencing a recession today -– commonly defined by economists as two quarters of negative GDP growth and defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research as "...a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."
School’s out. It’s summer break. How are you spending your “free” time?
The most successful students in High School (whom, I admit, I thought were weird as I slept in until noon) spent summers in development camps, studying topics of their own interests, participating in academic competitions, or working summer jobs to save money for a car or college. That is, the little time they had free from external demands they spent pursuing internal demands of self-development. This served them well when they returned to “business as usual” in late August.
If your customers are not placing enough external demands on you right now, what are you doing? Are you sitting back griping and worrying? Are you cutting your staff – the very people who make your company do what it does?
It’s a strange cycle, staff reduction. Business is down, cut employees, increase the unemployment rate, reduce the amount of spending money available in the economy, sales drop even further, .… You get the picture.
What if instead, you spent this summer break in self-development? What if you used this opportunity for much-needed reflection and creative thinking to identify where your waste really comes from (the bulk of it is likely not in your employees) and to develop innovative areas for growth? What if you invested what little you might have by developing your employees into truly effective members of your organization?
Heck, how much time do you really have to do these kinds of things when the market is strong?
If you have insights or questions on how to thrive in a weak economy, please start a dialog in the comments section below and I will reply.
If you’d like to know more about how to process improvement and employee development can costs, increase innovation, improve employee morale, and pay for itself several-fold, Contact Me.
