Note: Running Fridays in FromGregsHead.com, is a continuing series of tips brought to you by Greg Price. These run Saturday mornings during the BusinessMaker’s Radio Show on KPRC 950AM. Audio files can be found on the PKF Texas – Entrepreneur’s Playbook® page of the PKF Texas website.
Reading Microsoft’s position on balance its noted that turmoil in markets shakes confidence, diminishes the value of the financial assets, and creates uncertainty for business, consumers, and governments.
History, however, informs us that shifts in the economic landscape also off unique opportunities for those who are able to look past the near-term difficulties and seek out opportunities.
Organizations can choose to retrench, or they can choose to prepare for success and leadership roles. If they take the latter approach, returns from hard-fought cost-reduction battles can be turned into infrastructure improvements and fundamental changes in market presence or positioning to fill new niches or those surrendered by competitors.
Seeing opportunity in times of turmoil reframes challenges in a way that projects the lessons of history onto the future. Suggesting that organizations seize new opportunities during economic strife does not minimize the significant difficulties that they will encounter. Although picturing the future is difficult, turbulent times call for balance against new factors.
Organizations that can balance near-term concerns with forward-looking expectations will be better poised to succeed as markets calm; those that retreat risk becoming an anachronism while the world reinvents itself.