Partnering and bartering our way out of the recession
Partnering and bartering our way out of the recession
By Pervaiz Nasir Core-UAE
We are in trouble!!
Accept it or not we are ALL in trouble. While sailing on the good ship “SS Booming Economy” our navigation officers and pilots have run us into an financial iceberg and we are sinking – slowly and surely – while the captains of industry were entertaining themselves in the ballroom.
Not all of us will make it to the lifeboats; not all of us will know how to swim; not all who know how to swim can tread water until help arrives; and do not forget the sharks in the water.
If we are going to save the maximum number of people, we have to care enough to share.
We have to:
• Not expect business as usual
• We have to remember that business will not be as usual for a long time. Ever seen bombed out cities? You can rebuild the city, but the people are scared forever.
• We have to give those with a burning desire to survive and fight a chance and not grind them into the ground – I am talking of entrepreneurs who won’t give up – some will go on to create business that will employ our children – most will fail, but how do you judge at the embryonic stage?
• We have to cooperate and share.
• We have to bring back barter. I know the difficulty of barter and how its inefficiency gave rise to currency, but you know what? Secretly it is thriving, so why not bring it into the main stream.
• We have to let go of unbridled greed and lust for ever increasing profits. Hint, hint to bankers, property owners, big corporations, educators and all of us too.
• Tom Peters got it right – We have to re-imagine/rethink business.
I will ask a few simple stupid questions (and I ask a lot of these) and you call label me a fool, especially if you are a banker, a property owner or an educator, because these questions threaten the easy way of making super profits.
• WHAT IF the banks reduced their interest rates on loans and credit cards by half?
• WHAT IF banks started to lend money on easier terms and conditions?
• WHAT IF they DID NOT lend to speculators or people who have no business but to trade in land and shares?
• WHAT IF they did not hound late payers into a depressive suicidal state, thereby crippling their ability to think clearly and repay? And please – banks have no reason to point finger at consumers for failing – most are still around to plague us because governments around the world had to bail them out.
• WHAT IF you did not fill the jails with unfortunate souls whose crime was not having money to pay on time? I means if you applied the same principals, would not thousands of bankers also be doing time? Should they still not be prosecuted (persecuted) for destroying the global economy?
Also here is the problem(s)
• The government has to pay for the upkeep of these guests not the ones who put them behind.
• I do not think there is a business unit that runs successfully from behind bars that enables people to earn more from their cells then they did outside so that they can repay faster.
• And once they come out, I doubt they have built up a healthy enough bank/cash balance to be able to be a productive part of society from manufacturing of license plates that they can restart life, so a criminal existence actually seems attractive.
I mean if jailing could solve all problems, people would be knocking down on the doors of justice to allow them to go to prison!
• WHAT IF a credit counseling bureau is set up to help those who don’t know how to manage their finances and help them work thing out?
• WHAT IF educators (the ones who confer certificates and degrees and hopefully useful knowledge) drop their fees by 50% for a few years to help parents cope with the financial mess?
• WHAT IF landlords were ordered to drop their rents by 50% on buildings 10 years and over and 30% on buildings one to 5 years old?
• WHAT IF people actually started to have higher disposable income (cash I mean – not more credit cards).
• WHAT IF some company or individual could not pay genuinely, could they not barter their services? – It’s possible if we keep an open mind and not one sealed by old policies, procedures and “that’s how we have always done business” thinking.
POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
Everyone has policies and procedures they hide behind rather than actually THINK and adapt to circumstances!
Policies and procedures are like the organization structure, which was designed to allow the most general incompetent person to perform their duties satisfactorily.
Everyone hides behind rules set by standards, operating procedures and policies.
Well, here is a thought. Most of these were set up when there was massive growth, a recession or steady growth. And here is the kicker – they are NOT easily adapted for changing circumstances except for the worst possible decision that can be taken.
When they encounter a changed economic climate, guess what? They remain the same.
Imagine a sailor disregarding sea conditions and the weather and deciding not to change the configuration of his ship and the course. Would you call him a competent sailor? So why do educated MBA trained business leaders NOT know how to react to change??
Is it because we have forgotten the genesis of the term M.B.A = Master of Business Administration
http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/36/16/mba/
And if you think I am talking nonsense, then read the above articles by leading professors from Ivy League business schools.
Should we read it backwards?
A = Administration, B = Business , M = Master
Administrator: “One who administers, especially one who works as a manager in a business, government agency, or school.” “a person who manages or has a talent for managing”
So basically, he is a trained ADMINISTRATOR in the area of BUSINESS who has MASTERED the complexities of a routine job. It’s like letting the back office clerk manage a ship in a storm.
In a crisis we do not need trained administrators, we NEED LEADERS!!!!
CEOs try hard to keep their cushy jobs in a recession by:
• Firing people
• Closing plants
• Closing offices
• Cutting on tea and toilet paper
Now ANY village idiot could come up with that kind of thinking. So why are they so highly paid to do the work of an idiot?
Someone said “you cannot shrink your way to greatness” well I believe that you cannot recover the economy by creating unemployment!.
I mean would higher unemployment stimulate growth??? Are these guys on LSD or some other concoction? Are they seeing monsters where there are none and destroying their own corporate and human resource values?
IF any CEO of a major company says that he did not see the current melt down coming – well, I would say that he should be FIRED without pay as all the indicators were there for all to see. Just that no one wanted to believe that the red flashing warning light was anything more than a decoration on the dashboard of their companies.
If the ship runs aground, don’t fire the galley crew – prosecute the captain and navigator.
Everyone is hiding behind plans, budgets, polices and targets that were set up when the economy was rocking and rolling.
• Now it is SICK!
• It needs new THINKING.
• It needs new POLICIES
• It needs a NEW WAY to do business
IT NEEDS ALL THESE AS OF YESTERDAY!
Ok, so what would I suggest? Not that you asked, but I will say it anyway.
• Be flexible in your approach. We are all sick (financially that is) banks, businesses, consumers and governments (don’t believe me? Look up Denmark and California as an example).
• Initiate measures to help the worst affected. The jobless, the small entrepreneur for example. Help them get money, so they can pay money out (funny, we seem to have forgotten that money goes around from hand to hand, and that’s how we all live – unless someone tells me that it is generated from thin air, in which case I want to know how to do that myself).
• Reduce profit margins for a year and allow people to buy more. Who knows maybe if people buy more, we need to produce more, which means we hire more, who in turn buy more……………………
• Make credit tighter for consumers and easier for entrepreneurs – BUT monitor where they spend it. New plant and machinery - OK,! salary and wages – OK!. New Lamborghini – NO WAY!
• Stop all money for people whose business is trading in land and shares. – STOP the greedy and the stupid.
• Allow people/companies to declare bankruptcy for periods upto a of a year to allow them a chance to get back on their feet. Who hasn’t made mistakes? Citi, GM, RBS, Merrill, Lehman, Northen Rock, Porsche, Chrysler etc.
They had an army of economists and advisors to help them navigate through shifting economic situations and an army of bankers ready to lend our savings to them in hope of bigger profits and fat bonuses. Pity the small businessman and the consumer, he only had the newspaper and gossip to guide him.
Drop the old policies and procedures, it’s like we are all carrying our dead pets in a shoe box.
It’s wrong, it stinks and its making us all sick.
Bury the dead and get new living, vibrant thinking, where greed is a driving force but tempered with humanity, humility and helping the fellow men.
We are all in the same sinking ship after all and we need to repair it or survive it.
Can communities get together and solve the banking crisis?
