The previous post discussed the danger of reacting to current inflationary pressures with the tactics and strategies of the last 10+ years of almost no inflation. This post talks about the role of agility in addressing disruptive changes to your enterprise or organization.
Enterprises facing a transition, and understanding, can plan and act to rapid advantage. Agility is the capacity and capability to effect desired changes to advantage. Enterprise agility views uncertainty as an opportunity to take advantage to lower real costs, gain share, or build a new level of efficiency. Expecting better results from the same reactions is to ‘fight the last war’ or to ‘expect the rerun to improve’ – is the definition of coming disappointment. Enterprises must act to improve agility to continue to improve results.
You can’t cut your way to higher EPS. Instead? Enterprises need to substantially increase efficiency. Process streamlining with new automation and web order management cuts costs and improve services after the investment is complete.
Investing in high productivity people competes differently from minimizing labor costs to “get by." Payback returns from reducing energy costs are now substantially improved against higher energy prices. Improving production processes to reduce work-in-process inventory is viable now as interest rates (and other costs of money) increase. A key word here is investment, where enterprises invest when fighting-the-last-war dictates that investment must be reduced. Effectively focusing investment will separate enterprises continuing to thrive from losers in this business cycle.
If you're looking to invest in process improvement, people improvement, or other investments in effectiveness and efficiency, EkaLore has a few ideas.
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