The Business of Managing and Marketing in The Age of Turbulence
If you haven’t seen it yet, Marshall Goldsmith has a great interview up on his blog with Phillip Kolter on Chaotics.
They discuss what’s wrong with businesses having a “2 playbook” strategy and how to be profitable in a tough environment. The article has some nice specific examples and definitely worth a read!
I am amused a bit to read a post on today’s Wall Street Journal Economics Blog http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/ titled, “From Recession to Recovery Five Steps Under Strain.” The post begins with the line “As more economists expect a recovery to begin later this year…”
It reminds me that just as the whole notion of “recession” needs to be redefined, so does the notion of “recovery” need to be redefined.
The post outlines the five major factors that push a recession into a recovery. Yet if you look closely at the five factors, you can see the inherent volatility in each.
Economists and investors will become increasingly frustrated when they finally realize that the long awaited, 5-7 year sustained up cycle won’t materialize — not in 3 months, not in 6 or 12 months — not in the forseeable future.
This is the “new normality”, which investors will have to eventually accept and adjust to if they want to finally move forward with new, fresh investment strategies investing into companies who have also made their own adjustments to the “new normality”.
The sooner investors, business leaders and political leaders realize this, the sooner we will be able to get onto a new track of long term, sustainable prosperity (vs short-sighted, knee-jerk disruptive short term profit taking) driven by investment strategies that factor in turbulence, chaos, risk and uncertainty that will be with us for the foreseeable future in this, The Age of Turbulence.
Chaotics investigates in detail the changing business environment coined The New Normality, the notion that the world is fundamentally different as a result of the evolving economic, financial, political and social landscapes. These changes are not temporary but rather permanent. The McKinsey Quarterly has a great article on The New Normal, which clearly articulates many of these changes:
“It is increasingly clear that the current downturn is fundamentally different from recessions of recent decades. We are experiencing not merely another turn of the business cycle, but a restructuring of the economic order.”
The article accurately notes that going forward there will be new challenges, but opportunities remain:
“The business landscape has changed fundamentally; tomorrow’s environment will be different, but no less rich in possibilities for those who are prepared.”
Built on this belief, Chaotics is the fundamental tools and new business strategies to cope with The New Normality and to be successful. Please leave a comment with any observations you have on how the business world is changing fundamentally.
We’re all learners and we want to learn about what you’re doing in these turbulent times. To that regard, we’re pleased to launch Chaotics online, the exclusive source for information on the new set of strategic behaviors known as Chaotics. This site is designed for two way communication. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences with Chaotics. Please leave a public comment on the blog or contact us at contact [at] chaoticsstrategies.com.
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© 2009 Philip Kotler and John A. Caslione
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