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Rebound: Ready?

All companies preparing for an economic rebound face similar challenges, such as reduced staff and extensive cuts to training and leadership development. Your response to those challenges is what separates the successful organizations from the rest of the field.

The first step is to make sure the workforce is prepared, trained and ready to meet escalating demands. Here are three ways to get ready:

Repopulating the Workforce: The strongest, most forward looking organizations see repopulating the workforce as an opportunity to improve previous selection methods, having the following positive effects:

• Improve training effectiveness by matching employees more effectively with jobs that are appropriate for their skills and interests.
• Increase production by putting employees in positions that leverage their strengths.
• Selecting employees to improve attendance, retention and the probability of working safely (avoiding accidents), saving enormous amounts of capital.

Identify Training Needs: These same organizations recognize that reductions in training during the downturn have left them in a position of needing to play “catch-up.” Conducting a training needs analysis will help your organization to:

• Identify and target the highest priority training needs. Allocate limited training funds to the areas that will have the greatest impact on improving workforce performance and meeting customer needs.
• Identify trends in the industry that require proactive training action in order to respond to changing industries.
• In many cases, results provide evidence and leverage needed to increase training budgets in preparation for increasing demands.

Leadership Development: Leadership development is a continuous process in successful organizations, but even the most forward-looking companies have lost some ground in this area during the recession.

Many are preparing for the rebound by doing a full assessment of both upcoming leadership needs and organizational talent, answering the following questions:

• What leadership areas will be most critical to our success as business begins to “ramp up?”
• Do we have the leadership talent available to meet our needs as our business changes and grows over the next few years?
• How do we begin to address our leadership deficits? How can we accelerate the leadership development process in the areas where demand is likely to exceed supply?

For help in developing a rebound strategy for your organization contact Lou Gerst.

Rebound Dollars and Sense

McKinsey & Company Global Report recently asked CEOs, “What steps, if any, has your company taken or does your company plan to take as a result of the global economic turmoil?”, the top two responses were:

1. Reduce operating costs. (74%)
2. Increase productivity. (45%)

Now, more than ever, identifying cost effective ways of driving increases in profitability and productivity have taken on a much heightened degree of urgency. Overwhelming evidence points to Lean Work Processes as the key to reducing operating costs and increasing productivity. For example, CBIL clients have reported results such as:

• Reclaiming more than 5,638 square feet of manufacturing space, valued at over $845,000.
• Saving more than 520,000 non-value added steps each year.
• Increasing productivity by 49%.

CBIL’s Lean Enterprise training and consulting resources can deliver these kind of results for your company. In the process, they will trigger sustainable changes in work culture and work processes that will make your rebound permanent. To take the first step in making this happen call George Friesen at 314.539.5376.

Break from the Pack

The good news is that the recession will end – someday. The bad news is that when it does come to an end, many businesses will be unable to take advantage of the rebound. Reasons why:

• Many organizations have offered buyouts to senior people, many of whom carry much of the organization’s intellectual property in their heads. Company history and culture are important elements of the organization’s success, and provide employees with behavioral norms and motivation to improve. Long-time employees take this information with them when they leave.
• Senior leadership in many companies is aging, and many high level leaders are considering or actively planning retirement when the business (and investment) climate improves. If a company has not planned for this contingency and developed an active leadership pipeline, they could be left adrift in the next few years.
• When times are tough, many organizations cut back on their training and new product development. The return on training investment is sometimes hard to identify, and R&D is expensive. This short-term approach to saving money can come back to bite the company, especially if the new product pipeline is empty when business improves and employees’ customer service and communication skills get rusty.
• Some businesses choose to “just wait it out” and neglect to actively plan for the time when business improves. They think they can just pick up where they left off before the recession. The fact is that time and technology continue to march on, and without the ability to take advantage of new technology, some organizations will fail even when the overall business climate picks up.

We could go on, but rather than dwell on all the things that could go wrong, it’s more effective to look ahead. Oren Harari, author of Break from the Pack: How to Compete in a Copycat Economy, emphasizes the importance of not only trying to keep up with the competition, but to outstrip them and pull ahead of the pack. Harari offers these suggestions:

• Build communication within the organization, eliminate silos, and make sure everyone is speaking the same language when it comes to planning and leadership.
• Substitute “strategic thinking” for “strategic planning,” and involve as many people from the organization as possible, cutting through management levels.
• Select and train talented employees and leaders, not to do a job, but to create value. The mark of an effective organization is that job descriptions are dynamic, not written in stone, and that new ideas should be encouraged and rewarded, not shot down.
• Business talent should be liberated, not managed. The environment should be one of transparency and inclusion, with everyone being held responsible for continuous improvement in methods, systems, and value.

Successful companies in the next 5-10 years will not be the ones with size and physical assets. Success in the next phase will mean having the knowledge, talent, foresight, innovation, speed, mobility, and agility to take on the human and technological challenges that lie ahead.

Contact Barry Schapiro for more information.