In Russia, continued sanctions and falling oil prices force leaders to answer existential questions: do we cut costs to survive the short-term (and hope the good times come back again soon) or do we accept that today’s business climate is the new normal and adapt?
Perhaps unsurprisingly to those who’ve been doing business in Russia a long time the bias is towards the former. Yet the longer the ‘lock-down’ goes on the sooner someone will take the snake by the tail and start to exploit disrupted industries to their advantage. In reality this is already happening and those who wait too long to react will get left behind. Whilst not traditionally a core driver of Russian business HR has been placed under extraordinary pressure in recent years to prove it’s more than just a cost centre. It must also do this with less resources than ever and it’s currently ill-prepared to cope. In an excellent book looking over a decade of research as to what drives real, top and bottom-line performance two McKinsey partners highlight how the same old questions leaders ask of HR are often at fault for producing the same old answers:
If these questions sound familiar your organisation might be in more trouble than you think! The need to measure everything as a form of scientific proof has led HR to develop tools and processes that ape the work the hard functions like finance and operations do. But humans are not resources like capital and goods: they are irrational and unpredictable but also versatile and creative; the very skills now needed to pull organisations out of trouble. HR must discover a way to work with the way people really are, rather than how they want them to be to unlock new answers to old questions:
![]() Sanctions have been extended and the oil prices have dipped back to three month lows. So, what are you (and your organisation) going to do next? Do you cut again - or did you already strip away some flesh with the fat last time and now risk going into the bone? Short-term survival is of course key to long-term prosperity, but how can executives balance the needs of an uncertain tomorrow with the real threats of a volatile today? While evidence-based reasoning - defining problems, breaking them down into parts, analysing information and solving them - got the executive this far, today’s increasingly uncertain and unpredictable world resists such logical approaches. What then must leaders do? Leaders must add another bow to their quiver - taking a radically new approach to addressing issues of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Over the summer we’ll be blogging in preparation for a major autumn event that will widen leaders’ lens on their landscape to discover the real issues they must prioritise. We will be introducing a radical leadership model: Data - Insights - Perspective - Action to help businesses make sense of the challenges they face, so they act more effectively. Stay tuned for updates on how to:
For more information contact me at: marcusguest@narrativeinsights.com |
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October 2018
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