Facing Crisis. Facing About in Business Behavior

What’s good in crisis, it helps us to get rid of unnecessary things, habits and rules. Let’s take an example of common life. For instance, I am used to visit a Starbucks once a day to sit there sipping a coffee and thinking about how to set the world to rights. Now imagine I’ve got a problem that requires all my attention. What about my everyday visits to Starbucks? No doubts, I would totally forget about them, being fully absorbed into solving current issues. Any losses? No, just acquisitions: more time for real life, less blood sugar, and besides readings of the scale become more pleasing. Very similar things happen with business behavior in crisis times: good chance to give up weird unnecessary habits in favor of more real productive work.

One of the questionable things in crisis times becomes competition in its traditional understanding. I have already mentioned strange advertising techniques we use in our battle against competitors. However, although they look really weird, these methods still are among the most harmless and neutral means of struggle. We all are used to consider business as a real battle, with its winners and losers, with acquisitions and toll, with gains and trophies. Thus, “competitor” becomes almost equal to “enemy”, and “win the competition” equates to “beat competitors” or “crush competitors”. The point is: our success is supposed to be success against somebody. Yes, it might be challenging, yes, it might be exciting, however I believe this violent against is a bit excessive even in “normal times”, to say nothing of “crisis times”. Aikido philosophy of harmony is much more natural to my mind: if somebody or something threatens your existence, be able to manage this threat without doing harm to a threatening party.

Human being is a really strange creature: for the most part, in normal calm times we are selfish, aggressive and focused on approbation, but in tough times we strangely become more sensitive, more helpful and more human. Some kind of compensation? Maybe it is; or just result of getting rid of unnecessary things alien to one's nature. Anyhow, my point is that this social shift been projected to business might be of great benefit in this time of crisis and uncertainty.

Businesses are able to help each other. It is undoubtedly true for non-competing businesses, however it remains true for companies working in the same field, i.e. for competitors. We all are aware about lack of clients and lack of projects. If you got to know about some bid for job not fitting your own needs, why not share this information? Possible concerns about strengthening your competitor are out of time, now it is just help. What is good about helping people: it is strongly symmetric relation. If you are helping somebody, others will be helping you. Not exactly as it is understood in math: those helping you might differ from those whom you help yourself, but in general it works.

Got other ideas about applying the humane shift to business? Let’s talk about it and put into practice what we find.

Laozi says in the famous Verse 38 of his Tao Te Ching:

WHEN WE LOSE THE WAY, WE TURN TO VIRTUE.

WHEN WE LOSE VIRTUE, WE TURN TO KINDNESS.

WHEN WE LOSE KINDNESS, WE TURN TO MORALITY.

WHEN WE LOSE MORALITY, WE TURN TO RITUAL.

RITUAL IS THE MERE HUSK OF GOOD FAITH AND LOYALTY

AND THE BEGINNING OF DISORDER.

Usually our relationships in business balance at the lowest level between DISORDER and RITUAL. Now we have a chance to upgrade them to MORALITY or, with a bit of luck, even to KINDNESS.

Facing Crisis

One of the most popular subjects in the Web is still the world financial crisis. Quite understandable why: directly or indirectly it affects lives of billions of people. And, no doubt, we are among those billions. Saying “we” I now mean those involved in business, more precisely – into software development business and software development outsourcing.

We observe that the world around us really changes, and the question is, what is the real impact of these massive shifts onto software business?

According to Wikipedia, Seeger, Sellnow and Ulmer give four defining characteristics of crisis. Such an event:

1. Is unexpected,
2. Creates uncertainty,
3. Is seen as a threat to important goals,
4. Causes need for changes.

Okay, in our everyday life we meet quite a lot of unexpected difficulties that create uncertainty rather often, and we do not call such situations crises, just issues or problems. So, it seems to me that discussing crisis we should focus only on the items #3 and #4: threat to important goals and need for changes.

As for important goals that are threatened, the software business as any other business has the same goal – sustainability, and crisis jeopardizes continuous attainment of this goal. Threat to this goal motivates us to struggle, and here we approach to #4: need for changes.

So, what can we change and how should we do it to fit new reality? Is there anything specific for our business?

Basically, in this context I do not see any dramatic difference between software business and any other business of the – say – rear echelon, not affected by the crisis directly like mortgage companies. All of us suffer because our clients forget about us: they now have a lot of more valuable things to think about, and thus all the additional non first-aid services or products are not asked for.

It looks like clients just vanish. Our services are still of good quality, they are even cheaper than they were yesterday, but nobody shows a bit of desire to buy them. When McDonald’s found itself unable to sell beef-based Big Mac in India, they were in better situation, since Hindu people worshipping cow and thus hating Big Mac, still had money and were eager to buy something from the world-known brand. So, McDonald’s just changed beef for lamb (or for chicken), “Big Mac” for “Maharaja Mac”, and – that’s it: clients purchase these new Macs and pay money for them. Somewhat different is now with our clients: they just do not take any notice of us.

What is regular market at non-crisis times? Crowd of clients and crowd of vendors. Clients are interested in being aware of the services and products they might get from the vendors, and in general, clients are ready to purchase some services and products. Vendors also behave in their usual manner jumping up and down on the spot, pushing competitors apart, raising their hands and screaming “Choose me, I obtain perfect skills and expertise!”, or “Choose me, I will do it cheaper!”, or “Choose me, I am guru in PM!”, or “Choose me, I am better educated!”, or whatever else. Now it’s all the same except that almost all clients are absorbed in their own thoughts and do not look at the crowd of vendors at all.

It turns out that habitual jumping, screaming and handing competitors off is not a good idea now. It does not work for this new crisis-affected market. Time to rethink models of behavior? My suggestions for it to follow later, in the next post.