What just happened?
December 6, 2008
An editted version of this article appeared in the December issue of Boss magazine:
What Just Happened?
Accept, for arguments sake, that the Global Financial Crisis is an epoch-shifting event.
Ignore the view that it is just the latest in a long line of economic crises – according to one recent study, it is the 149th crisis in which a country’s GDP plummeted by 10% or more since 1870 – that will continue, and are, in fact, integral to the progress of capitalism. Ignore the fact that two-third of recessions in the last hundred and fifty years have lasted less than 1 year.
Don’t compare it to the events of the last decade or so, the Asian financial crisis, LTCM, the Russian default, the bursting of the dotcom bubble, Argentina, 911, all of which were seen as huge epoch-changing shifts in global capitalism at the time, all of which have faded from memory much faster than anticipated.
Accept, instead, that this is a huge dislocation, an earthquake that has cracked the landscape apart so the freeway of progress must take a different route. Imagine that the wholesale socialisation of finance across the US and Europe will be more than a short-term detour, but a more permanent redirection. Accept that the financial markets will be utterly transformed, that trust between counterparties will need to be rebuilt using new and yet-to-be-invented structures, that the way we do business in the future will be different to that of the past.
If that’s the case, and there is no saying it isn’t, what ideas will we be using to build the new world, and who are their most articulate proponents in the English-speaking world today?
The inevitable rightsizing speech
December 3, 2008
If only because my short-term memory is poor, I remember the day as if it were yesterday. It was 1994, or thereabouts, and Cartwright, divisional CEO was giving a speech.
“We are not responsible for your career,” said Cartwright. “Only you are responsible for your employability.”
“We are moving into an era when companies will be more flexible with how they employ people, when fast moving technologies and markets may make particular jobs redundant overnight. To deny that this is going to happen would be folly. But that doesn’t mean you are on your own. The company will do its part. We will provide you with training and opportunities. We will do our best to make the decisions that ensure that there is a market for the product you produce. But at the end of the day it is up to you to ensure that you remain employable. The skills that companies need are changing all the time, and it is up to you to ensure that you are equipped with them.”
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