See you on the flip side

“It is my contention that in the over 40 years that I have been associated with the JSE, South Africans have always over-reacted emotionally towards the exchange. When there is a bull market people believe it is never going to stop and when there is a bear market everyone believes that the sun will never shine again.” – Humphrey Borkum, Chairman JSE Limited.

This is not another comment on how tough it is out there. There’s plenty of that going around, and then some. This is rather a question on how one should prepare people for the ‘flip side’? And there always is a flip side, whether you’re running a company or flying an Apollo Mission.

There are clearly some difficult decisions to be made when resources are tight, cash flow is under pressure and business isn’t flowing in like it did 12 months ago. Of course it doesn’t help when you don’t know when the cycle is going to turn, how quickly and to what levels the economy will return? Making a bad decision when the pressure is turned up can have far reaching consequences. Containing costs and doing everything to keep sales to an acceptable level are all part of the mechanisms most managers turn to.

What about people in all of this? The enormous value people contribute to a business cannot be reduced to a neat Newtonian formula. There is no, “x + y = z” with people. My favourite term for people comes from the IT world. They accurately describe people, in the spirit of terms like hardware and software, as Messyware. People are messy. They’re unpredictable. Most managers I know spend much of their careers doing everything they can to get the best out of and from their people. And many feel like they failed. While a forklift can’t intuitively tell the difference between a bull and a bear market, people most certainly can.

Their energy, philosophy, engagement levels, interest, motivation, inspiration, resilience, health, smiles, fun, productivity, etc can be impacted by their coffee being cold. How many cups of cold coffee would you guess an economic slump is equal to? Add to that electricity blackouts, political uncertainty, high crime levels, etc.

So while there’s no hard and fast science to this, I feel confident suggesting that when times are tough our focus on people, within our businesses, is more critical than when times are good. In reality, however, the converse plays itself out:

• Managers are under more pressure operationally, so key conversations that were happening, are happening less and less.
• Budgets are tighter and smaller, so less money is spent on the warm fuzzies we know are so important.
• Business isn’t walking in through the door, so people are spending more and more time pounding the pavement and less and less time sharpening the saw (learning and development)
• Instead of the passage talk being dominated by promotions and bonuses, the whispers begin to focus on lay-offs and head-count freeze.

The danger of course, is that when the economy eventually turns and business starts to grow, your people are in absolutely no position to take advantage of it. They’re tired and worn out. Their emotional bank accounts are severely withdrawn. Clearly this is not the scenario you want to have.

We had coffee with a client the other day who is determined to avoid people feeling insecure in this climate. One of the mechanisms they’re using is to invest in learning and development. The popular wisdom has been to cut back and freeze, their wisdom has been to invest and spend. It’s not an obscene amount of money, but it will impact on at least two areas I’ve touched on above:

1. Participants in the project will naturally feel invested in as they have opportunity to grow and develop.
2. When the economy turns they’ll have a far better chance of having a team who are fresher and more prepared to take advantage of the opportunities.

My point, however, isn’t how much you’re spending or saving. It’s how hard you’re working to ensure that the people in your business stay very high up on your agenda. It’s a true-ism for all of us, in any context, that when things are good we need little from those around us. It’s when things get tough that we need all the support, energy, connection, etc that we can find.

Barrie Bramley is a founding partner of TomorrowToday and heads up our talent development project. He invites you to engage him in further conversation. He can be e-mailed on barrie@tomorrowtoday.co.za

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