People.Processes.Networks

The turn of the year is always about expectations and promises for the coming year. If we only considered the media, then our expectations for 2009 could be quite gloomy….everything was in red, everything downward sloping and the c.. word was used far too many times. A better approach for shaping your expectations would be to realize that the sky-is-the-limit mentality is going to be replaced by the more down-to-earth thinking for some time.  This, however, does not imply that 2009 will be a bad year. On the contrary, 2009 could be a great year. You might have more time for thinking, spending time with people close to you, networking and even for… blogging. In light of this, one of my 2009 promises was to start blogging – and here it is my first post.

I recently came across a very interesting article by Donald N. Sull in Harvard Business Review that is perfectly suited to the current situation in business. The article Strategy as active waiting argues that huge business opportunities are rare and their timing is almost never under control of an individual company. So, it is important to be ready when they come and to manage smart during the long periods of business as usual. The long period of economic growth in the last years could be seen as a period of business as usual where it has been important for companies to manage smart and prepare for the “unknown” ahead of them. Now, when the discontinuity occurred, it could be the time to start scanning for huge opportunities. If we secured our resources in the recent storm, 2009 might just be the right year to discover the golden opportunity and exploit it.