My biggest lesson of 2009

As the global economy took a beating in 2009 following Wall Street’s fallout, what lesson did business leaders take from this? How can they also use this lesson to propel the business forward in the coming year? Lisa Cheong finds out more.

■Jessica Tan

Managing director

Microsoft Singapore

I think that managing your business well, regardless of whether the market is thriving or in the doldrums, is important. By this I mean making sure which key markets you need to focus on in order to grow your business and what your growth levers are.

The other piece is managing your costs, but it cannot be done exclusively. Trade-offs need to be made so that the cost-cutting effort is balanced with sound business strategy. A lot of companies just manage costs in bad times and that is not going to work because the market is moving. So we still have to invest in skills, innovation and work with our customers. We also have to invest in the external market in terms of working with our partners.

If you build the business engine well, in good times, it will just ride the wave. And in bad times, it will weather the storm.

We haven’t been immune to [the recession]. We manage quite a tight ship and we are clear on our priorities and on which areas our teams need to build their skills. We have no control on the market, which took an unprecedented turn 12 months ago when our customers were badly impacted. But I personally feel it [the pain] could have been worse if we didn’t make the choices we did, to manage costs while continuing to invest in our people.

■ Pete Read

Senior vice president, Asia Pacific

Global Intelligence Alliance

The financial crisis certainly created unexpected and unwanted problems in many areas of the business, ranging from lower spending by clients, to long-term customers unexpectedly being retrenched, to uncertainty and job security concerns among employees.

In such a situation, as far as HR is concerned, cuts and economies become necessary. Succumbing to the temptation of trying to delay these economies only makes the inevitable negative effects worse in the end.

Similarly, delaying communication about problems and necessary changes in resourcing and so on only leads to speculation and increased concern among employees. This in turn can create a situation where some staff might begin to consider other employment options, simply because they are aware of the problems the company is facing but not yet aware of the solutions being developed by management, or even the fact that management is working on these solutions.

In summary, the biggest lesson learned from the recent financial fallout centres around human resources: it is that in order to retain employees’ trust and loyalty, one has to react to changes quickly, be decisive when faced with a difficult situation and communicate openly and frequently with staff.

Knowing that employees are just as concerned about crisis situations as management is a very useful lesson to have learnt. This knowledge will help us to react faster, make important decisions early – if even if those decisions are tough ones – and communicate sufficiently early and frequently to avoid misperceptions and undue concern among employees.

Hopefully any crises or difficult situations that we may face in 2010 will not be of the seriousness and magnitude of those faced in 2009, however the lessons learned can certainly be applied in situations at different levels with the company. For example within one office, one department or even one team of people. Ultimately the learnings of 2009 will benefit the company, employees and clients.

■ Clifton Chua

Managing director

FedEx Express Singapore

While I learned many lessons from the crisis, from my perspective, the one area that we have been very conscious of is that employee morale and loyalty cannot be built overnight. These crises are economic cycles, there are good times and bad times. It is just that the last 12 months has been really tough because the crisis is global in nature.

The decisions that we make during such times have repercussions, not just on the business decisions, but on employee morale and loyalty. A lot of companies may take short-term decisions to the detriment of the business. But it is important to constantly remind ourselves that we should not take easy decisions during the tough business environment that could be detrimental in the long run. I am talking about extreme measures such as layoffs which we were fortunate not to have.

During the last 12 months, we focused a lot of training and best practices. Now I believe that we are in the trajectory of seeing some growth, and we need now to focus on how we can bring the business to a new level from an investment and infrastructure perspective.