The Good Thing About Recession

The good thing about the recession…

For most of my working life I’ve given the same advice whether to a bank, a supermarket, an IT company, or a department store.

As it’s so simple and logical I’ve had to hire an Obfuscatus Diplomas, that is a guy who just stepped off a wedding cake, fluent in incomprehensible verbiage, to present a fifty page report with six pages of addenda which after being sifted through by a team of qualified idiots, boils down to this;

1. Always have one less person than you require. This means that every worker has to do his/her work plus a little extra.
2. Every employee, from C.E.O to sweeper must justify his/ her existence. Managers who are there to watch workers can be replaced by a cardboard cut out.
3. Workers who can host personal phone conversations or Yahoo Messenger are better accommodated somewhere else.
4. Find the bottlenecks and remove them, so delays are due to the fact this is number five and number four is currently being worked on.

The problem in most businesses is that there is over employment. Too many people with not enough to do.

Now, with the recession, people are going to lose their jobs. Those who actually work will be retained. Those whose existence can not be justified will be discharged.

With companies forced to be efficient new models will have to be introduced. This means that flexi-time might gain the respect it deserves, useless managers will be removed and impediments which slow progress, such as having one person with a ’signature’ or key or whatever, (which explains why you have to stand around doing nothing until if/when they return from lunch, meeting, tryst).

Customer service must take priority, as well as keeping prices competitive. These are positives. The sour faced clerk will be removed, for with fewer workers, the on-the -floor manager will actually see her behaviour, and because he must justify his existence, will decide, her job or mine, and chose to dispense with her’s.

Keeping prices competitive has never been so important.

I recall telling an owner that a set of hangers was 30% cheaper at another store, and she, going into a diatribe about how much she paid for them, and her need to make a profit. Today, when people are pinching every penny, just knowing that one item is that much higher here chases customers. The assumption is that other items are 30% higher. Hence, to ‘break even’ on a set of hangers, this company will go out of business.

Although a lot of companies will fail, those that do not will be those which understand what I’m talking about.