- Companies shut. If they aren’t performing well, it can make for a compelling case to stop the bleeding, not pour more good money after bad, cut your losses, etc.
- Companies don’t have to continue loss-making operations just to keep staff employed. It’s business, not charity.
- The pink slip is a traumatic event. Mass retrenchment is even more traumatic. But there are positives.
- A sudden jhatka is often better that a slow, long-drawn death – which is invariably more painful. An entire group at once is also better than one by one – the inevitability only increases the stress levels for the ones left behind.
- A struggling business operation has twin issues. The struggle of the business results in paralysis. The paralysis makes a collapse inevitable, indeed hastens it.
- To take any business forward requires extremely determined leadership. In the scenario of a struggling business in a highly competitive market, the need for determination and leadership becomes essential.
- Determination usually comes from a single individual, or a group of key individuals who share the same vision and passion.
- Determination requires personal courage and granite will.
- Most competitive industries require long-hauls. It is rarely a single roll of dice.
- It’s like a night at a casino. Shit happens. Fortune is fickle.
- In a high-stakes game, the table has an expensive cover charge. In order to play, you have to pay your ‘entry fee’ for each round.
- Paralysis, indecision, lack of risk taking, being tentative, backing off, hedging your bets, etc – during a high stakes game – is rarely smart strategy.
- It costs to stay at the table. If you want to win, you’ve got to play. Folding is losing.
- Companies often change management & leadership to introduce new blood, new determination into an operation.
- There is difference between changing leadership and exiting a category. It’s reveals organizational DNA.
- Individual DNA is also critical. There are people who work in big companies and there are people who make companies big.
- The Kennedy line “ask not what America can do for you, ask what you can do for America” is appropriate.
- Finally, there is a fundamental difference between buying a company and owning it – versus taking ownership of the company you bought.
- A difference of life and death!
SAMEER NAIR 