Carly Fiorina on how to navigate a downturn
Posted by: Phil Dourado in Carly Fiorina, Rules for success, high performance, strategic leadership, risk reduction, How to lead in a downturnWATCH FOUR LEADING INDICATORS
This is an excerpt from September’s Taking The Lead, the monthly email newsletter from Leaders in London. If you like it, you can subscribe using the link on the right. If you already subscribe it should land in your in-box any minute.
Carly Fiorina also reminds us that you will navigate best through the current turbulent economic conditions if your attention is kept outward, on forward indicators, rather than being sucked into the classic mistake of looking inward and focusing almost exclusively on resource reduction (cuts) without paying enough attention to what’s coming. Fiorina says you need to watch four leading indicators:“The leading indicators of any business are
1. Customer satisfaction
2. Rate of innovation
3. Diversity of your management team
4. Ethics”
Now, that’s really interesting because, apart from the first one, most companies would have rolled those bottom three, or at least the bottom two, up into the category of ‘nice to have in good times, but time to ignore them and bare our teeth now’.
Why Diversity? “If everyone thinks in the same way…something important is going to be missed, some problem ignored, some risk under-estimated. The only antidote to the dangers of ‘group think’ is a diverse team sitting around the table,” says Fiorina.
And Ethics? The FT reported recently that regulators are on the lookout for a rise in questionable behaviour as companies take whatever measures they can to protect themselves from the downturn. If you sail close to the edge, argues Fiorina, inevitably someone in your organization will cross the line. And, in a transparent age, you’ll be sunk.
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