“Strike Season”- Power to the workforce …or is it?

 

As cautioned previously we had a robust strike season post SWC, all of which points to leadership on both sides serving their own interests. I have said this before; unless your people have a direct line of sight to your organisation’s objectives they will not be aligned to same. Easier said than done? Of course, but that is leadership’s responsibility to ensure that this communication and understanding is unsurpassed and the information loop is completely closed. Blue and white collar understanding and grasp may be at different levels, but again it is our responsibility to bridge that gap with tools at our disposal. Balance Scorecards are by their nature static instruments, it is up to leadership to breathe life into them and build bridges between them. I have seen many BSC’s that are behavioural tools rather than integrated performance tools, and the fall-out from these in almost all cases require costly resources, in the form of constant restructures.

 

This issue leads me to the following strategic initiative.

PERSONAL AND BUSINESS COACHING

The well documented cliché is how businesses today continue to struggle with the implementation of their strategy plans, the achievement of their business objectives and most of all getting the best out of their people. These issues are all interdependent, and one of the fundamental reasons for these failures, is that your people need guidance to get their own personal strategy plans in place, only then will they be able to resonate with those of the business.

What we mean is that when the people working for you have their personal strategy/career/family plans in place, then they can dovetail these with your business’s plans, i.e. they can relate their own plans to that of the business. At that point the business gets energy from within, because what they then drive has a direct impact on the rest of their lives.

Inevitably this is best achieved via third party intervention, as this is seen to be impartial and not biased from the point of the business. External facilitators are also able to hold candid discussions around these issues that if conducted internally are seen to confrontational and threatening. This is also applicable to those single owner businesses where the owner needs to correlate their personal ideals with that of the business objectives.

 

Economic “Heads-Up”

Business and Consumer confidence measures are key indicators of sentiment within markets. Sentiment gives rise to appetite and appetite drives spending, investment and risk taking all of which provides the platforms for business activity. Desperation measures also drive these factors but we need to be able to differentiate between desperation and appetite.

We hear and read that a number of confidence measures are on the rise, but the appetite appears lacking. Ad-hoc green shoots have been a-plenty over the last few months, but no definitive trends have emerged, and it is a sustained trend we are looking for. Our annual strike activity has done nothing to allay fears of “double-dip” recessionary conditions. Now we are informed that we cannot consume any alcohol at or before breakfast to alleviate our gloom – this is indeed a tough country!!

A recent business article reported that construction firms were eyeing Africa & the rest of the world for business, whilst apparently waiting for Govt to orchestrate the infrastructure capital injection of R800bn announced a while back. The mothballing of the R8bn Pebble Bed reactor program has reportedly resulted in a flight of expertise to grateful overseas projects. These two issues alone could pose some serious challenges once again in SA when we actually do need the resources and skills. We do not appear to lay down traction, matters always seem to take on an ad-hoc stop/start activity. This does not allow for structured planning by business to take place.

Consumer expenditure as we know accounts for some 70% of GDP, and with the soft interest rate cycle is expected to drive some recovery, but this may take a while as debt relief may take precedence over spending, which would be the prudent action at this precarious point in time.

2nd quarter stats reflect a marginally narrowing of the budget deficit spurred on mainly by an improved trade balance and increased spending during the SWC period. Whilst FDI decreased slightly, “other” foreign inflows also aided this positive position. A tax on foreign inflows would surely be a negative factor and such comments continue to attract negative international sentiment. Good fiscal and monetary policies appear to be holding extremely well and this is manifested in the <4% inflation rate and interest rates at an all time low. The resultant problem is now the very strong rand exchange rate. History shows clearly that these matters are best left to competent Central Bankers rather than political parties, but either way it is senseless to purposefully weaken the currency in the absence of a commensurate sustainable initiative to ramp up local production and beneficiation for the manufacturing and export industry. SA Unemployment figures are alarming high at the moment ranging anything from 25% to 43% depending on your source of information, and these factors require urgent and sustainable interventions to reverse same.

 

Insofar as our Rugby is concerned, well the trend we have witnessed is downside rather than upside, so in the absence of a sustainable strategy, what do we do? We do what every other strategy-less, business, family, Government, team does – we re-structure!! This is an annual occurrence not dissimilar to animal migration patterns, at least the animals have some structure to their activity!

We are fast heading towards the festive season and the reality would be to continue to batten down the hatches. Successive quarters of all the positive indicators will indicate trends emerging upon which we can begin to plan new investment tactics, which will in all likelihood not be before June 2011. This means that we should remain in grindstone mode, achieving efficiencies in all aspects of our businesses to enable us to react promptly when these trends manifest. It is the ideal opportunity to spend time and effort on strategising and embedding this process into your business and your team.

 

So we now see, Business, Government and our family homes are all subject to strategy – as Rameses II said to Moses: “So let it be written, so let it be done”

YOUR FUTURE IS AT STAKE – INVEST IN IT NOW

We’ll continue the conversation next time, along the road of strategy.