Robbie Slaugter
By Robby Slaughter
Slaugher Development, LLC
Every conversation these days seems to turn to the struggling economy. In hushed whispers people wonder, “how much worse will it get?” The business environment may be bad for a while, but the economy will eventually grow stronger than ever. The secret of the future is the same as it has always been: working smarter.
Business follows a cycle of excess, scarcity and innovation. When times are great and sales are booming, there is not much incentive to chase the leads that fall through the cracks or worry about a few small mistakes. An upswing in the market reduces the threat of competition, since people have more money to make purchases, creating more breathing room for organizations.
But during an economic downturn, people begin to tighten their belts. No stone is left unturned, and no perk is safe from budget cuts. Companies examine their expenses more closely and often reduce staff. This in turn, generates fear and resentment among current employees who start to put in longer hours and quit taking risks. Everyone becomes hypersensitive and hyperconservative, hoping to weather the storm.
Despite all the gloom and doom, clever entrepreneurs, small business owners and fearless researchers will not stand for a recession. While everyone else is battening down the hatches, they are out innovating, finding ways to achieve even more with fewer resources. They are building machines to reduce laborious procedures, creating new software tools that make work easier or reducing complexity to the astounding satisfaction of their customers. These innovators emerge as the leaders of the next boom period, and then the cycle repeats.
In the past thirty years, we have seen recessions busted by the rise of brilliant technologies. The 1981-1982 downturn was followed by the advent of personal computer as one of the fasting growing industries in America. But this upswing eventually led to a bloated economy and a savings and loan fiasco to create the 1990-1991 economic recession. Out of this bear market came the first Internet revolution, which provided tremendous growth until the “bubble burst” in 2001. But again, the economy recovered through radical ideas: the web 2.0 startups, as well as creative financial products and a renewed construction industry. These last two spun out of control and rapidly deflated, leaving us in the situation we now face.
The next phase in the cycle is innovation. Off in a garage somewhere, or in a college dorm room or at an underfunded research lab someone is dreaming up a recession buster. You can bet that idea will leverage technology, but it’s likely to not be entirely new. Eli Whitney pitched the concept of interchangeable parts for mass manufacturing in 1798, but it wasn’t until forty years later that others made the process workable—right after the Panic of 1837. Grocery stores weren’t new but a clever approach called “Trader Joe’s” was hatched during the 1958 downturn. Music had been on television since the beginning, but MTV launched in 1981. Apple released the iPod years after the first MP3 player came to market, but deep within the 2001 dot-com bust. Look at any unbelievable story in business history, and you are likely to find the combination of an ordinary concept, a team of risk-takers and an economic recession. The cycle of innovation requires it.
What will shake us out of the current crisis? Possibly a renewed commitment to productivity. Our workplace procedures are often terribly inefficient, with duplicate entry systems, slow servers, wasteful approval processes and countless errors. Paper forms and hand-written submissions still dominate many businesses in an era that should be entirely digital. Phone numbers are dialed by hand and voicemail messages left by actually speaking them over and over again! The next wave of innovation will be working smarter. Will you be part of the future?
Robby Slaughter is the founder and principal of Slaughter Development, a process consulting and methodology engineering firm based in Indianapolis, IN. Visit www.slaughterdevelopment.com for more information.
