Tag: Bouncing Back: How to Build Resilience and Come Out Ahead in a Tough Economic Climate
Build Resilience In Crisis
In times of economic uncertainty, building resilience is essential to not only surviving but thriving. Here are some tips on how to build resilience and come out ahead in a tough economic climate:
Stay optimistic: A positive outlook can help you stay motivated and focused on your goals. Instead of dwelling on the negative, focus on what you can do to improve your situation. Take time to celebrate small victories and progress towards your goals.
Stay connected: Maintaining strong relationships with family, friends, and colleagues can provide a sense of support and community. Reach out to your network for help, advice, or even just to vent your frustrations.
Stay flexible: Be open to new opportunities and ways of thinking. If your current job or business is not performing well, consider other options and explore new areas of interest. Look for ways to pivot and adapt to changing circumstances.
Stay informed: Keep up to date with the latest economic news and trends. This can help you anticipate changes and make informed decisions about your finances and career.
Stay healthy: Prioritise your physical and mental health. Exercise regularly, eat well, get enough sleep, and practice stress-reducing activities like meditation or yoga. Taking care of yourself can help you better cope with stress and adversity.
Stay focused: Set clear goals and stay focused on them. Create a plan of action and break it down into manageable steps. Take small, consistent actions towards your goals every day.
Stay resilient: Remember that resilience is not just about bouncing back from setbacks, but also about learning and growing from them. Use failures and challenges as opportunities for growth and self-improvement.
By staying optimistic, connected, flexible, informed, healthy, focused, and resilient, you can build the skills and mindset needed to thrive in a tough economic climate.
Stop Predicting Mishaps and Build a Fortress: Managing Resilience in Uncertain Times
The world outside your boardroom window is a tempestuous ocean. Unforeseen tides roll in, stormy winds whip up, and unpredictable leaders steer their own vessels with varying degrees of… competence. As business leaders, we’re tempted to focus on these external fluctuations, squinting into the distance, trying to divine the next political misfire, economic tremour, or environmental upheaval. We spend countless hours crafting intricate contingency plans for every conceivable dystopian scenario – all while neglecting the most critical factor in our control: building a resilient business.
Instead of exhausting ourselves predicting the machinations of our “great leaders,” let’s shift our gaze inward. Let’s focus on what we can control: fortifying our own organisations. Let’s become architects of resilience, crafting businesses that thrive amidst chaos, bounce back from adversity, and emerge stronger from the stormiest seas.
Redefining Resilience: Beyond Crisis Planning
Resilience isn’t just about weathering a crisis. It’s about adapting, evolving, and even profiting from unexpected challenges. It’s about building an organisation that doesn’t merely survive the punches, but thrives on the throws. To achieve this, we need to move beyond reactive crisis planning and embrace a proactive, holistic approach to resilience.
The Pillars of a Resilient Business:
Foundational Stability: A resilient business starts with a rock-solid foundation. This means solid financial management, robust infrastructure, and a clear understanding of your core competencies and value proposition. Ensure your financial house is in order, with diversified revenue streams and adequate reserves to weather unexpected downturns. Invest in critical infrastructure, from IT systems to supply chains, ensuring redundancy and adaptability. Know your strengths and weaknesses inside-out, and focus on what you do best – outsourcing non-core functions to agile partners.
Agile & Adaptive Culture: Rigid organisations crumble under pressure. Cultivate a culture of agility and adaptability where employees are empowered to make decisions, take risks, and experiment. Encourage open communication, cross-functional collaboration, and continuous learning. Embrace diverse perspectives and foster a “fail fast, learn fast” mentality. Bureaucracy breeds stagnation; agility nurtures resilience.
Innovation Engine:Disruption is the new normal. Stay ahead of the curve by fostering a culture of innovation. Invest in research and development, encourage creative problem-solving, and reward out-of-the-box thinking. Be open to new technologies, business models, and market opportunities. Turn uncertainty into an opportunity to innovate and differentiate yourself from the competition.
Risk Management Mindset: While we shouldn’t obsess over predicting specific external events, a proactive risk management framework is crucial. Identify potential threats, assess their likelihood and impact, and develop mitigation strategies. Regularly review and update your risk assessments, and ensure effective communication and training around risk management protocols. Be prepared, but don’t get paralysed by fear of the unknown.
Stakeholder Trust & Engagement: Trust is the mortar that binds an organisation together. Cultivate strong relationships with employees, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Be transparent in your communication, proactive in addressing concerns, and responsive to their needs. A network of trust enables your organization to weather storms together, with everyone aligned towards a common goal.
Driving Business Goals With Resilience as Your Fuel:
Building resilience isn’t about neglecting your objectives. It’s about ensuring you achieve them despite, and even because of, external turbulence. A resilient business is a proactive business, one that anticipates change and turns it to its advantage. By focusing on internal strengths and adaptability, you position yourself to seize opportunities amidst disruption, navigate uncharted waters, and emerge as a leader in the new landscape.
Remember, the next leader’s blunder, economic downturn, or natural disaster is inevitable. Stop squinting into the fog and get to work building your ark. Invest in internal strength, agility, and innovation. Forge a culture of resilience, and watch your business weather any storm while achieving its intended destination. By focusing on what you can control, you turn uncertainty into opportunity and become the captain of your own destiny, no matter who’s steering the world around you.
Surely we are not going to swing from fastest economic growth to economic depression?
Business Strategy During Recession
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How do you recession-proof your business?
How can we protect from inflation?
How to prepare for inflation at home?
The impact of recession on businesses is severe. However inflation can be the precursor of a recession. Central banks are charged with the responsibility of keeping inflation under control partly to ward against recession or depression. Healthy inflation is generally regarded as 2 percent. Many countries are experiencing at least 3 times healthy inflation. Some key economies are experiencing much more than that just now. In other words the biggest economies are suffering from very unhealthy inflation levels. Most central banks have not responded fast enough and should gave started increasing interest rates earlier to control inflation. Some have not even started to control inflation. The long-tail effect of increasing interest rates means that for next 6 months at least inflation will remain out of control. The war in Ukraine may even mean inflation is uncontrollable for years. Out if control inflation leads to a recession at best and depression at worst!
Now is not the time to pat yourself on the back. Surviving pandemic was good, but the next existential threats to your business are already here or rushing towards you.
Rising inflation means that consumers and business decision-makers have the same money but it doesn’t go as far as it once did. The end result is that they buy fewer products and services. Inflation is a driver of a recession. Back to back crisis’s caused by pandemic, war, fuel, energy, fertiliser and food shortages or rising prices could result in extended global recession that turns into a global depression. The global pandemic caused the deepest recession since the Second World War and the world has used all its tools, including record low interest rates and extended Quantitative Easing QE, to scramble back out of the recession. However it means the world is particularly vulnerable just now – with economic risk management tools exhausted or trying to recover.
What Can Governments Do To Reduce Inflation
Reducing Inflation Strategies
Inflation is the sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. It can be caused by a variety of factors, including rising costs of production, increased demand for goods and services, and monetary policy decisions made by central banks.
Governments can take several measures to reduce inflation, including:
Monetary policy: Central banks can raise interest rates to curb inflation. Higher interest rates make borrowing more expensive, which can slow down economic growth and reduce demand for goods and services.
Fiscal policy: Governments can reduce government spending and increase taxes to slow down economic growth and reduce demand for goods and services.
Price controls: Governments can impose price controls on certain goods and services to keep prices from rising too quickly. However, this can lead to shortages and reduced incentives for producers to supply goods and services.
Supply-side policies: Governments can take steps to increase the supply of goods and services, such as by investing in infrastructure and education, and by reducing regulations that limit the ability of firms to produce goods and services.
Flexible exchange rates: Governments can allow their currency to fluctuate in value against other currencies. A stronger currency will make imports cheaper and can help to reduce inflation.
Price stability target: Central banks and governments can jointly agree on a target for inflation, and use monetary and fiscal policy to achieve that target.
It’s important to note that reducing inflation is not always the best course of action for an economy. Sometimes, a moderate level of inflation can be beneficial for economic growth, especially in developing countries. It’s important for governments to weigh the costs and benefits of different policies to reduce inflation and make the best decision for their economy.
Many central banks have an inflation target of between 2 percent and 3 percent – seen has healthy level of inflation
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In conclusion, governments have several tools at their disposal to reduce inflation, including monetary and fiscal policy, price controls, supply-side policies, flexible exchange rates, and price stability target. However, it’s important to consider the costs and benefits of each policy before implementing them.
Strategies for business survival during a recession
Businesses fold quickly during a recession. Before you know it, you are losing both suppliers and customers. Both can damage your business and even threaten an otherwise successful business survival. Set a Key Performance Indicator KPI to help you monitor your risk management in this area of your business. A Key Control Indicator KCI could be that no more than 10 percent of your key supply’s come from any single supplier. Likewise a KCI could be that no more than 10 percent comes from a single customer. If you stick to your KCI then the failure of any one customer or supplier is not going to pull your business down with their failure to manage recession risk.
What you set your KCIs at will vary depending on your financial strength, type of industry and current resources. You may never hit your KCIs but they flag up when action is needed or your progress towards better recession risk control.
Expanding your customer base is not just about expanding your business. It is about protecting your business from loss of business. Expanding your suppliers could increase the overall cost of supply during good times thereby limiting your profit. Your management team needs to decide what level of risk you are exposed to, the type of risks and your appetite and resilience to risk.
We are moving from pandemic survival to rapid business development. If you focus your energy on growing your business faster organically with new customers you can ride the economic wave through the various threats to your business.
Just before a business falls flat on its face it can seem that the world was its oyster! The world seems to be dragging itself out of the economic damage of a global pandemic. We are seeing economic expansion at or near record rates across the world. Wages are rising and many countries have unfilled job vacancies galore! What could go wrong? Answer is out of control inflation turning into a recession and high unemployment.
The world has shot its bolt. Due to the economic impact of the global pandemic central banks have slashed interest rates to the bone and in a few cases into the bone! There is no wiggle room left to cope with another economic disaster. Trouble is nobody told our political leaders and they have led us into the next economic disaster on back of an inflationary crisis on back of war, food crisis and energy crisis. You wait for a financial crisis to come around every 10 years then several come along at once!
Inflation may have given you a good opportunity to inflate your prices. The good times are slipping away. Your pricing model may have brought in easy money that will be useful. Times are changing and you may think that new opportunities are appearing for business growth.
Stay on top of your business changing needs:
Profits are cut due to rising costs due to inflationary pressures. Make sure you focus on market prices to seize opportunities appearing in your marketplace. Instead of raising your prices think about reducing your costs or making your offering more attractive to new customers.
Cash is king now! Take steps to improve or maintain cash flow. Pay later and get paid quicker.
Win new customers. Make sure you your marketing and sales development budget is working hard for you.
As interest rates rise there will be bargains. Minimise your outgoings. Reduce your overheads.
Hopefully you took advantage of cheap money. However the days of cheap money have passed or are passing. Now is the time to think about paying off debt. The rising cost of debt could pull down countries never mind companies! Make sure your business is not wasting profit on back of your cost of debt. Controlling your costs will help you to be more competitive in tightening marketplace.
World central banks need to act more quickly and more aggressively to calm inflation rates around the world to prevent a global recession and perhaps even global depression from 2023 onwards. This includes increasing interest rates and increasing interest rates in bigger leaps and bounds.
A healthy level of inflation is generally considered to be around 2% per year.
Why 2 percent?
2% inflation per year is considered healthy because it allows for some economic growth while still maintaining stability in the purchasing power of money. It is a rate that is low enough to prevent rapid changes in the cost of goods and services, but high enough to encourage investments and borrowing. However, the specific level of inflation that is considered healthy can vary depending on a country’s economic conditions and goals.
Who thinks this?
The idea that 2% inflation is a healthy level is widely accepted among central banks and economists. This is because it provides a balance between stable prices and economic growth, and has been found to be compatible with low unemployment and stable financial markets in many countries. The Federal Reserve in the United States, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England, among others, target an inflation rate of around 2%.
How do you reach this target?
Central banks use a variety of tools to reach their inflation target. The most common method is through the manipulation of interest rates. By adjusting interest rates, central banks can influence borrowing costs, which in turn can affect spending and investment decisions. This can then influence the overall level of demand in the economy, which affects prices.
In addition to interest rates, central banks can also use other monetary policy tools, such as buying and selling government securities in the open market, to reach their inflation target.
In some cases, central banks may also use forward guidance, where they provide information about their future plans for interest rates, to influence market expectations and help reach their inflation target.
It’s worth noting that hitting an exact inflation target can be challenging, and central banks may sometimes miss their target due to various economic and financial factors outside of their control.
Is inflation transitory?
Protecting your business from risk of recession and inflation
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Change organisational attitudes to risk management to build flexibility and resilience
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