Let The Bad Times Roll
from the seperating-the-good-from-the-bad-managers dept
A good article in the Economist talks about the severity of the downturn and how it surprised a lot of companies by going from 65 mph to 0 much faster than most people expected (that was just 65mph??). They also point out that despite all the rhetoric about “just-in-time” or “build-to-order” inventory management (thanks to all these wonderful supply chain management software products that have been flooding the market) there’s still an inventory glut. It turns out that just-in-time really mean almost-just-in-time. At the end of the article they make the point that a few others have before: recessions are a chance for good companies and managers to show what they’re really worth by keeping things going. Companies that avoid layoffs, and tend to “creatively” employee excess employees tend to do a lot better once the economy starts heading back up.
