How would you navigate through this crisis?
Here is a discussion topic on strategy.
Assuming you are the CEO, and leader, of a well-known corporation of your choice, what strategy would you use to lead your company through the current economic crisis?
Explain, using examples and references, and relate your comments to the Four Principles for Purposeful Action.
This post was written by Margaux Ellis-Hall, who will lead the discussion for the week starting on March 10.
Questions of values and ethics have become increasingly important to organizations, to stakeholders, and to the larger society within which they exist. These questions relate not only to products and services, but also to processes, technologies, employees, decisions, and the basic form, nature, and culture of organization. Ethical questions, however, are highly equivocal and increasingly characterized by competing values of both organizations and stakeholders. These competing values are most strongly felt during a crisis, when questions of wrongdoing, negligence, responsibility, and blame arise and when victims of a crisis are often powerless and vulnerable. Moreover, crisis often makes the organization’s fundamental ethical stance highly visible. Ethical issues are associated with crisis at all stages of development and are the principle factor in ethics scandals. We suggest that maintaining an ethical stance regarding crisis requires discussing and clarifying values so that they may be taken into account both when planning for and when responding to a crisis.
source:http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106807300
Leadership processes are closely associated with both organizational successes and dramatic failures. Leaders inculcate and personify many of the organization’s values and set the overall tone and direction of the organization. During a crisis, a leader often becomes the organization’s public face, playing a critical role by providing information and explaining the crisis to stakeholders and the larger public. Crisis frequently requires that leaders respond to accusations of wrongdoing, justify and explain choices, and offer personal assurances that problems will be corrected. Leadership frequently frames the larger meaning of the crisis, which may be necessary for followers to begin the initial sensemaking process that ultimately leads to coordinated, harm-reducing actions. In addition, the leader may establish an overall tone for the crisis by remaining calm, personifying authority and control, and reinforcing core values. Leadership, therefore, is one of the most important and most visible organizational roles in the aftermath of a crisis.
source:http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106807300
Metrics that Matter:- Issues relating to public policy and individual privacy. Recently, though, started to notice a disconcerting trend in the way vendors, particularly in the security space, discuss their accomplishments.
Following are just two of the claims seen lately in sector that really puzzle us:
“The fastest-growing email encryption solution.” Fastest-growing based on what metric? Users? Customers? Messages sent? Size of the code base?
“Now everyone has the largest email encryption directory in the world.” That’s nice, but wonder if anyone is using it on a regular basis. It’s not really much of a challenge to collect a large number of email addresses or even keys and put them in a big database. The challenge is in getting a large number of enterprises to use those keys for their intended purpose and protect their confidential information. Without that level of usage, a large directory is no more useful than a phonebook is to someone who doesn’t have phone service.
Always believed that in evaluating enterprise software vendors, there are only a few metrics that really matter:
1. How many companies have installed their products? Note the emphasis on “install.” Purchasing a product is one key step, but we all know cases of companies that have built sizable businesses selling what became shelf-ware. You just can’t build a sustainable business that way.
2. Are any of those companies in similar businesses or have a similar business model to yours? It’s great if every airline in the world is using a certain product.unless you’re a bank, in which case the users can tell you very little about how the product might work for you.
3. Continued usage? This metric gets at two issues. The first is whether or not the product met the business goal for which it was purchased. The second, equally important, is whether the vendor provided the needed training, support, and documentation to ensure its customers are successful with its products. Well-run enterprise software companies understand that you aren’t selling commodities and that the post-sale relationship is at least as important as the pre-sale relationship.
Reference: http://blog.pgp.com/index.php/2008/02/metrics-that-matter/
I am actually tired of the word “crisis”, while this is a downturn in the economy of the World, and it is worst for those who have lost their jobs.
But this IS part of the economic (business) cycle (http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://goldprice.org/bob/uploaded_images/economic_cycle-720776.png&imgrefurl=http://goldprice.org/bob/2008/02/m3.html&h=338&w=310&sz=2&tbnid=Z6QBtxDGfigJ_M::&tbnh=119&tbnw=109&prev=/images%3Fq%3Deconomic%2Bcycle&usg=__r8ItawTIW4W9m92uED5wJcFYSMQ=&ei=Pjm-ScTJA53YygW7nLD9BQ&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=5&ct=image&cd=1)
CEO have to know that downturns WILL have and need to plan as much for this as posible.
Reacting to the downtown after it happens, is like closing the barn after the cows have already left.
The last sentence I guess defines the word crisis i suppose.
Roy,crisis must betackled properly.The crisis-triggering event marks the beginning of the crisis stage, the second stage of crisis development. The most immediate and salient conditions of this stage are high levels of uncertainty, confusion, disorientation, surprise, shock, and stress. High levels of emotional arousal, including fear, anger, sadness, and loss, accompany the event. Organizations must also act toward or respond to the crisis under these intense and uncertain conditions. In retrospect, the initial impact of a crisis is usually indisputable. Yet organizations often lose valuable time by failing to recognize the severity of the events. This may include tenaciously clinging to routine responses and procedures, which are rarely effective because of the novel circumstances and the intense confusion and urgency. Crises are often associated with high levels of turmoil and stress that cannot be managed with conventional practices. Hence, crisis forces organizations to resolve a fundamental tension between the urgency of the moment and the long-term complications their responses may foster.
source:http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=106807300