Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Energy of Change

We are in the middle change that is releasing tremendous amounts of unguided energy. Think of the states of water: gas, liquid, solid. During dot.com bubble a lot of energy was absorbed and the economy became gaseous and a lot of value boiled off. We're now releasing economic energy and productive capacity and things are freezing.

If you've lived in a cold climate, you know the common advice is to turn on you faucets and let them drip just a little bit so the pipes don't freeze. Keep things moving just enough so the pipes don't freeze and burst. You push up your water bill a bit, yet ask anyone about the repair expense for burst pipes.

There are organizations out there where the pipes are about to burst. To survive they need to keep a trickle of activity going in some important areas that might be freezing right now: strategic intent, customer relationships and service, and end-to-end integrity.

Survive with intent to succeed another day.

1 comment:

  1. Kevin...I agree 100%. A downturn is a perfect time to invest. It gives you some time to retool and build new capabilities that will allow you to respond to customer needs when the economy turns back up. Those companies that are thinking about this now will be the ones that will be able agile enough to respond. Those that have their faucets turned off will loose market share when the recovery takes off.

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