GROWING A NEW LEG

I was in Belgrade, Serbia, recently to speak at a conference of Business people.

On the way in from the Airport to my hotel, I asked the young driver as to whether he felt that things had improved or worsened since my last trip to Belgrade a year earlier. He said that he felt that things had gotten worse, but that it was all going to be all right soon, as the Government had said that things would get better next year.

It seems that all around the world, people are waiting for the Economic Crisis to end, and for things to get better sometime next year.

I think that it is time that we stopped talking about this Financial Crisis as though it was something that was about to end, and started talking about the New Economic Reality instead, as I believe that this environment of economic restraint, of uncertainty and of regular market heaving surprises will be with us for a long time.

Companies (and individuals) who sit around waiting for things to get better are a lot like a man with one leg sitting around waiting for it to grow back … it just isn’t going to happen !

A man with one leg needs to get on with living. He can go out and get a prosthetic leg and get on with his life. It will not be the same as before, and he will need to make some adjustments, but it can still be a good and worthwhile life. In the same way, I believe that Companies need to get on and learn to live within the new Economic Environment in which we now find ourselves. It will not be the same as before, as obviously that was unsustainable, but it can still be a worthwhile existence.

Waiting for “the Government” or the “Central Bank” or some other external body to make the Business Environment better doesn’t make any more sense than the man with one leg waiting to develop lizard-like qualities so that he can regenerate a limb.

The success of the Companies and Organisations that we are part of depends totally on the ability to adjust our business models and our thinking to the new realities, and the sooner we can make these adjustments the more successful we will be.

If by some fluke of chance Governments and Central banks do work out some way of making things better for us all, we should just take this as an added bonus, rather than something that we were all depending on.