Interesting times....
Normal summers are quiet and the news wires resort to ‘silly season’ reporting in the UK. This summer has been different. Phone hacking scandals, an awful massacre in Norway, riots in English cities, England top of the world cricket rankings - these are not normal events. Then you add in the economic headlines - slow growth, sovereign debt crises, unemployment rising...
So how should you run your business in uncertain times like these? The temptation is to batten down the hatches and wait for the storms to blow over. Unfortunately, by the time this happens, different challenges will have surfaced.
It is entirely possible to grow a business dramatically during difficult times. Taking an example from our locality, William Morris grew his car manufacturing business through the great depression of the 1930’s (sovereign debt crises, rising unemployment, etc - sounds familiar doesn’t it) into one of Europe’s largest businesses. What was it that he did that we could learn from?
Many of the things he did you’ll find in the text book. Rapid product innovation, process improvement, cost control, smart marketing, brand differentiation (Morris = value, MG = sporting, Wolseley = luxury), international expansion. All of these are investing in the future. The future is always uncertain - to quote the George Michael lyric ‘you gotta to have faith’.
Do you have sufficient faith in your product to take the bold actions required to grow your business? William Morris’s made a big breakthrough in the early 1920’s when car sales stagnated and the ‘experts’ were saying the market was saturated and ex-growth. He brought a whole new group of buyers to the market by the bold action of dramatically adjusting the price of his low end model. As an even older source of wisdom once described it when talking about the effect of faith on business ‘ To him who has, will more be given. But to him who has not, even what he has will be taken away’.
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