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Uncertainty is always there. The degree of uncertainty can rise and fall.
Leaders, being human, also have difficulty coping with uncertainty. When they receive confusing information, they tend to react in predictable ways that are not always constructive. They also use judgment shortcuts to make decisions.
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During periods of heightened uncertainty, leaders reflexively reduce investment, stop hiring, slash marketing, refrain from entering new markets, or stop making decisions.
Although understandable, acting in a pro-cyclical manner can be counterproductive. It can leave companies poorly positioned to benefit from the next stage of the cycle.
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Organizations should be inclined toward action. As a baseline, companies must strive to be fit for growth. This can be done by aligning costs with priorities and strategy, investing in varied capabilities, and using traditional and digital levers to execute.
They must regularly engage in scenario planning with an array of options. They must build the capacity to be agile. They must learn to become more resilient to withstand strong external forces and quickly recover from setbacks.
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When the environment is highly uncertain, a strategy has to be:
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In times of uncertainty, if companies reduce headcount and leave positions open, they can miss out on filling critical needs and areas.
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Companies can act on the options they create only if their operations can support the execution.
It means understanding which operations and capabilities give a competitive advantage, and ensure the company owns them and invests in them.
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Uncertainty tends to paralyze deal-making or push companies into transactions that are defensive and reactive.
In evaluating deal opportunities, companies that are reasonably agile to execute transactions when they have to will find that deals present occasions to boost growth and pull ahead of rivals. Companies that invest now, regardless of economic conditions, may be best suited to ride the next technological wave.
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Many organizations have found that volatile shifts in tax and regulation impact their industry, their specific markets and the general environment for business.
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Finance has its own heuristics in a time of uncertainty.
Companies should use data and information technologies to regularly run scenarios to review and challenge economic, business, and sales projections.
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If organizations can stop being so defensive and assume a more aggressive stance, they have a better chance of maintaining their balance and shaping their future.
It will take a lot of courage, but companies should consciously lean into changes and counterintuitive activities when it is least comfortable, or when forces of inertia are pushing them toward a predictable outcome.
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The measures to stop the spread of the virus are well-known by now: staying home in lockdown, working from home as a default option, schools switching from physical classrooms to e-learning models.
Not every country has been able to make these choices fast, due to a combination of hesitation, inaction, and paralysis. Before any decision is made, the first thing to do is determine what needs to be done and at what pace and scale.
As the current health crisis steamrolls into an economic crisis unparalleled for the last 100 years, the decline in economic activity is already at par with the great depression.
This crisis of global proportions requires resilience, both for near-term issues like liquidity and cash flow, as well as long-term issues like uncertainty, personal financial stress and recovering from multiple challenges that were already present and are now further complicated due to the pandemic.
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Automation has a huge potential to change the nature of work, freeing up workers from tedious, repetitive, and precision work. Automation is a transformational change for owners, employees and...
A thorough reassessment is required of how the company operates and how best to capture the impact of automation.
Companies who have just automated on the surface have had small and limited results that don't last. Companies that have understood and deployed the high-risk, high-reward proposition have completely transformed it's business offerings and have become market leaders. They have also redeployed the freed up workforce and provided additional services, even turning their competitors into customers.
A joint effort of commitment and communication is essential for a thorough approach to automation and has to be led by top management.
Apart from IT, all stakeholder groups like HR, Operations, Business Units have to be engaged, and communicate consistently.
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By 2030, up to 30 to 40 percent of all workers in developed countries may need to move into new occupations or upgrade their skill sets. Skilled workers in short supply will become even scar...
The pace and scale that technology disrupts is a social, political and business challenge.
Employers are best placed to make a positive societal impact, for example, by upgrading the abilities of their employees and equipping them with new skills. Employers will also reap the greatest benefit if they can successfully transform the workforce in this way.
Talent is the largest barrier to the successful implementation of new strategies.
Many leading businesses realize that it is quicker and more financially prudent to look internally and develop the talent they already have. Yet only a third of global executives report that their organizations have launched any new reskilling programs.