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.
People are critical to operational excellence. Turbulent economics often evoke knee-jerk cost cutting at the expense of future flexibility. Eliminating jobs is easier than reinventing processes, and the cost savings are more quickly realized. But when companies look to their core missions, it is their unique combination of people, process, technology, and work environment that makes up the business, with process and work environment highly reliant on corporate learning and corporate culture for success. And that means people need to remain positive and feel like they are relevant to the execution of strategy.
Empower people with better processes. Keeping people at the center does not mean that all painful human resource decisions can be eliminated; rather, it means thinking through the implications.
“People” decisions are often clouded by ineffective systems that have grown rampantly and organically in times of affluence and that force talented individuals to act as coordinators.
In stark economic times, individual talents need to be unleashed to help navigate change and prepare for the next economic upturn.