Hang On In There

So here we are, slap bang in the middle of the worst recession for decades and everyone's asking, "How did we get into this mess?"

Here in the UK, even the Queen, not usually known for her business acumen, reportedly asked on a visit to the London School of Economics, "Did nobody see it coming?"

One renowned business guru did have the answer, or at least a clue to an answer, some time ago.

The late Sir John Harvey Jones, head of ICI, once said that the most difficult skill for a manager to learn was not how to finance a business, nor how to run it efficiently, not even how to manage people.

The most difficult skill was to foresee, prepare, and respond to change.

Why is that? Is it because, in the face of uncertainty, most managers retreat into what they know best, the certainties of the past?

The problem, of course, is that management is a rational discipline. In stable times, people want their businesses to be run by people who are steady, who are reasonable, and who can take calculated risks. Which is not much help when the roof's falling in.

But Sir John did have an answer to how rational managers can adjust to changing times. And that was that managers have to learn how to straddle the two horses of stability and change and try to steer them in the same direction at the same time.

Not an easy task. But it has to be done. And one of the key steps in doing it is for managers to re-assert the non-negotiable core values of their business while taking the best decisions to deal with change.

This week, we heard that Honda were stopping production at their car plants for a period of 4 months. It's their way of responding to unprecedented change while preserving who they are and what they stand for. As their American vice-president Richard Colliver said, "None of us can control the difficult business conditions we face. But we can control the actions we take. The most important tool in a time of change is a set of core values that don't change."

And isn't that what we all should be doing in these tumultuous times? Using our core values as a compass to get through change.

Stephen Covey put it in another way: "People can't live with change if there's not a changeless core inside them. The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value."

Take time to re-assert your changeless sense of who you are today and hang on in there.

Eric

PS One of the things that we are all capable of doing is to develop our unique gifts as far as we can - and then some more. If you're a manager, that means learning the skills that we love to bring you on this site. Why not develop your own learning plan by looking through our products and using them to get through these changing times?