Time for a Shift
Most experts say you should work harder than ever during a recession, doubling your efforts both to increase your value and make up for production lost to downsizing. Likewise, many advise a similar tact in customer relationships during hard times; concentrate on keeping the customers you have since new ones are in short supply. Neither is wrong, but maybe there are better solutions.
This isn't news, but many industry-changing companies were created during past economic downturns. Microsoft, HP, GE, and FedEx are just a few of the brands delivered in a recession. These companies didn't succeed by fulfilling an existing customer need; they created innovations that customers didn't know they needed yet. The same can be said of the people behind those innovations. They were thinking outside the box, experimenting and researching during a time when fear prevents deviation from the norm.
Have trillion-dollar bailouts for banks, automakers, and homeowners made us forget that sometimes change is good? Citigroup arranged for a tax break so it could pay back the government. Forgive me for not cheering, but didn't the company just want to avoid changing its culture under government supervision? Earlier this year I wrote about retail chains going bankrupt and asked whether they'd gotten too big to survive an economic slump. If each Circuit City or Linens n' Things store had been a handful of small businesses, would as many jobs have been lost to a market correction?
This prolonged recession may be the final ingredient needed for a shift in how we view business. Is bigger really better? Until recently it was better for investors, employees seeking stability, and consumers looking for lower prices gained through efficiencies and scale. None of those is as true today as it was a few years ago and I would argue bigger was never better from a customer service point of view. The problem is that as businesses get bigger, the focus is too much on the "M" in CRM and not enough on the "R." Corporations only know how to manage customers, not relate to them. People know how to relate to each other, but their hands are too often tied by rules and regulations, scripts and sales pitches.
Those people are the ones who will create tomorrow's innovations. They'll have the next great idea that makes the corporation they used to work for irrelevant. They'll succeed if we're strong enough to let that change happen and don't intervene because we're more comfortable with the status quo. Change is a good thing. What we've been doing got us into this mess, so why not try something else?
NOTE: This will be my final blog entry at 1to1. I've enjoyed interacting with our readers for the last three years, and I've appreciated the opportunity to share a little bit of myself on this blog every week. Thank you.
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