But it seemed to go well I think. And Sally was happy too!
Who is Sally I hear you ask? Sally Urquhart is the CEO of littleBIG Marketing and PR, a boutique agency based in Melbourne. So if anyone is looking for an amazingly brilliant PR person, give Sally a call or send an email to sally@littlebigmarketing.com
The main point of the conversation on Sky Business was how could Productive Thinking provide a potential upside in the downturn. Sky Business have a segment called 'upside' on their morning show everyday. We focused on how PT provides a better understanding of exactly what is going on and what the future could possibly look like BEFORE we start looking for solutions. Rather than look for the 'one right answer' we need to open up and widen the search for what's REALLY going on. I suggested that asking the guy in the warehouse and the waiter and the shop assistant was going to provide more immediate feedback than waiting for the financial analysis!
The warehouse guy knows he hasn't despatched much in the past two days, the waiter knows how many covers have been served and the shop assistant knows right there and then how many people have been into the shop and what the customer thinks of the goods. The key role for the CEO should be to get up and go look. The principle from there was to teach everyone some productive thinking skills before you needed to lay them off. If the learn to think, discover new and better ways of doing business and making customers deliriously happy - maybe you won't need to lay them off at all?
How is it possible that organisations can go into receivership with the entire staff made redundant, with it all coming as a surprise to the staff, the distributors knowing nothing about it, the franchisees not being aware of a problem, and customers paying deposits on goods THE DAY BEFORE the company went down? Why didn't they know? And why were they not involved in looking for potential solutions? What if they had productive thinking skills? What if they had seen the early warning signs a year ago? What if they had changed the way they do business? What if they had halved costs? What if they sold twice as much?
Wishful thinking? Maybe, but we'll never know...
What we do know is that staff, distributors and franchisees were clearly not involved, they were not asked to think, and they are now all out of a job in the middle of a recession. Let's hope they soon find a progressive employer. Good luck to all concerned.
Just a thought - look forward to comments!
Have a fun day
Ken
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