Ah the good times…
Ah 28 years of uninterrupted growth…
Ah Australia, ‘The Lucky Country’*…
Ah ‘How good is Australia?’…
Pssst. But don’t talk about the R** word…
We are indeed fortunate in Australia to have access to many resources, space, and talented people; however, our luck maybe running out if we carry on drinking the ‘recession avoidance’ Kool Aid, carry on with our old ways of managing business and thinking everything is rosy instead of adapting to the array of changes, challenges, and opportunities that are out there in the market place.
Which is why I couldn’t go past economist Jim Stanford’s comments in Paddy Manning’s Guardian piece ‘No-growth future: has Australia’s economy finally run out of luck?’
“The business class has been content to sit back, watch the profits continue to roll in from investments that they’ve already made … but really not get out of bed to do their job… It’s funny, with all this conversation about dole bludgers, the group in Australia that’s really been accustomed to getting money without working is the business community. Their profits are at near-record levels, and their investment effort has rarely been weaker. And yet all they can do is demand more government handouts.”
For years Australia has been gloating about our record breaking years (now 28) of avoiding a recession – I use the word ‘gloating’ deliberately because while we have many things to celebrate and acknowledge in surviving the GFC, there is a smugness that has crept into our boardrooms, politicians, and corporate C-suite boasting about being ‘recession avoidant’.
This is dangerous on many levels because it creates a level of comfort or complacency that sends out messages that keep us cocooned for the harsh realities that face many people and businesses who are doing it tough despite the ‘good times’. Yes, there are industries that have been doing very well like Mining and Housing, but there are many industries, that despite rosy picture painted, are stagnating, struggling and some are doing it tough.
I’m no economist or politician, and I’ll leave it up to the likes of Paddy Manning, Jim Standford and other prominent journalists, academics, economists and the like who can present arguments that talk to the state of our current and future economic prosperity.
So instead, I want to go to something more immediate. Something that is within the control of business leaders and their teams. Something that, regardless of good times or bad, helps us find and develop viable opportunities, healthy markets, positive customer relationships, great employees, effective value chains, and ethical supply chains.
I want to talk about Selling Better as an Adaptive Strategy you work with all the time to keep you fit and viable whatever the future may bring.
While Selling Better is always about a human centred, ethical approach to selling, Selling Better is also an adaptive strategy. A Selling Better Strategy is about looking to the future and seeing what is possible, where the new opportunities lie, where we need to invest and move forward to, how we need to adapt to engage and deliver value to customers and our businesses now and into the future.
A Selling Better Strategy approach is also about risk mitigation.
A Sales Strategy has a life cycle of around 18-24 months which means it constantly needs to be reviewed and potentially revised. A Selling Better mindset means that instead of operating in ‘set and forget’ mode, smart senior leaders – CEOs, the C-suite, and Sales Leaders – use the filters and feedback provided by a Selling Better strategy and operational framework to check in and calibrate the information they are getting from the field, from data analytics, from customers and suppliers, and from the market place to continually adjust and adapt how they go to market and drive new opportunities and hopefully avoid a race-to-the-bottom scenario which is a death sentence to any business.
This is how we keep sales coming in for the short to medium term. But this is not enough. Senior business leaders need to get off their risk avoidant, short-term, profit seeking butts and out of their comfort zones and plan for the future. That is their job – to provide a ‘future present day’ for their people to operate within and this requires investment; investment in new thinking, new ideas, new technology, new processes, new markets, and so on.
This means we have to stop and go beyond the current conditions and look for new opportunities – exploring Blue Ocean Strategies that can help our businesses and people adapt to the changes so we are relevant and viable now and in the future.
Where are the new markets and customers? What value do we deliver? What are people buying now?
Anyone can ‘sell’ in the good times and sit back and take the profits, but the real test comes when we have to stand up and sell in the tough times.
And the signs are here that change is coming and things are going to get tougher.
The question is, how many Australian business leaders forego immediate profits to find new markets and new ideas to invest in so as to create new markets, better opportunities, more employment, better wages and better profits down the track?
For too long Australian businesses, by and large, have been risk-managed not strategically lead.
For too long many Australian businesses have been operating in a comfort zone.
For too long many Australian businesses have been cost-managed not invested in.
Yes there are so many opportunities for Australian businesses to be amazing here and on the world stage.
So who will go missing in action and who will take the lead?
How well can the Australian business community quickly adapt to the changing world so we can truly be regarded as a remarkable society?
Time will tell.
But I know one thing for sure and that is I will not be relying on luck as my guiding force.
* The phrase ‘The Lucky Country’ that is often used by many in positive regard to describe Australia, is actually a put down. The quote ‘The Lucky Country’ was penned by Donald Horne, a famous (or infamous) historian in the 1960s. His actual full meaning was quite derogatory:
Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.
** Recession
Remember everybody lives by selling something.
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