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Giving Back During Tough Economic Times, Part 1

In writing consistently about our flagging economy, the problems we’re facing and the expected duration of this situation, I’ve realized that the tone and scope of my articles have been increasingly depressing.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not depressed, but I recognize that the tone has nonetheless been dour.

That’s why my upcoming series of articles will provide a variety of ways for you to make a positive difference during these times of hardship. It’s important that we don’t all adopt the Turtle Mentality and keep our heads in our shells. We need to be a part of our community and give back however we can, even and especially if that giving back isn’t or can’t be monetary.

My first piece of advice is about layoffs.

As a CEO, owner, or manager, you may understand all too intimately that these times have unfortunately required layoffs and company closures.

As a turnaround professional, I understand better than most that cash is tight, but if you find yourself in a position like this or advising someone who is, be especially sensitive to the personal needs of those severed. Be sensitive when you have those difficult termination meetings; be sincere, and it will show.

Consider offering options like out placement services, extended health insurance and networking meetings. Let people know – if it’s true – that when positive cash flow and profits return, their jobs will be filled again by them, if possible.

This kind of approach deepens your understanding of others’ plight and demonstrates that you have compassion for your fellow human beings.

In some cases it might be appropriate to create lesser positions within your company part time. Though this may be insulting to some and result in a lessening of benefits and pay, it will allow them to remain employed in some capacity and ensure that when the time comes, they will be easily able to restart their previous positions (this can be very challenging and quite uncomfortable for all involved as a subject but weigh the benefits and ask those to whom you might offer this to do the same).

In short, do whatever you can to soften the blow to those less fortunate when the economy requires that you downsize in ways you would prefer not to.

Please stay tuned for more posts on giving back during a touch economy. I think that this series will allow us all to generate and act on some ideas that will be to the benefit of our community and country.

Please share your ideas for giving back below.

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Give the CEO’s Thanks

It’s rather conventional this time of year to post about what one is thankful for. And, of course, that’s natural with Thanksgiving only a day away and an assured conversation at your dinner table during which each person takes a turn sharing that for which s/he is thankful.

I’m all in favor of this ritual, because I believe that acknowledging what we have and being grateful for those things hones our focus on that which we value and motivates us to continue working hard to keep them in our lives.

The job of a CEO or president – and many of those around him – can be particularly time consuming and overwhelming, often to the point of distracting him from why he is doing what he does in the first place. As we’ve discussed, seeing the forest through the trees can be a challenge, and with all the components involved in running a business, it’s easy to be distracted.

On more than one occasion – which is to say dozens – I’ve found CEOs cheating on their spouses, supporting girlfriends on company dollars and getting distracted by the shiny things in life.

I dare say these CEOs forgot why they were working so hard and lost sight of the gratitude they felt for what they had and why they had it. 

I encourage everyone, business leader/owner or not, to reflect on those things that CEOs should be grateful for. Consider the following CEO’s Thanks:

“I am grateful for the internal drive I have to build something that affects many people positively and the wherewithal to channel that drive into actionable steps and concrete work. I am grateful for every person who works at my business with me, who challenges me to stay honest and who keeps our business moving in the right direction. I am grateful for those who have had faith in me along the way, who have funded, guided and supported me. I am grateful for my customers and the reasons they’ve found to continue patronizing my business. Most of all, I am grateful for my family, which motives me to work as hard as possible to support them and teach them the lessons I’ve learned as a company leader and without whom profits, success and power would lose meaning.”

While it’s easy to conjure up this Gratitude Attitude at Thanksgiving, I hope you’ll be thankful for your internal drive, employees, customers, mentors and family every day. When we lose sight of all those who make our work possible, we cease working for many of the right reasons, and I’ve seen this lead businesses down the road to crisis and ruin on more than one – or one hundred – occasions.

This Thanksgiving, I remember those things I try to recall every single day that I’m so grateful for:

1. My Wife

2. My Family

3. The Livelihood that allows me to support them

What are you grateful for? Please share in the comments below.

Wishing you and yours a Happy Thanksgiving.

 

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The New American Ethic: Revaluing Hard Work and Austerity

I recently reaffirmed my contention that not only are we in a recession, but we never truly came out of one in the first place. The term “New Norm” was once tossed around a lot, and I want to re-invoke it here in order to say that the economy is going to be like this for a long time. If you ask me, at least the next 5 years.

So what does that mean for the regular person? That it’s time to find pleasure in austerity.

Changing Attitudes

Part of the economy and its effect on us is our attitude towards it. If we change our attitude towards the economy we will be better able to bear the burden of this bear market environment, and we will minimize its impact on us and our country.

Now, that’s easier said than done. I can tell you to be happy with less far more easily than I can be happy with less. I won’t pretend like this is a picnic, but we need to start thinking differently if we’re going to make this happen.

In essence, we need a return to Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic. Maybe we don’t need a return to it, exactly, but we could use a secular reevaluation of its value – a New American Ethic. That is how we will change our attitude.

The Protestant Ethic Reapplied

Now, don’t balk at the notion of applying a Protestant Ethic because the religious undercurrent shocks you. An element of Weber’s reconfiguration in The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism was an emphasis on wealth and its accumulation as the result of a rational means of existence. This, on its surface, is actually rather secular, but I’m not proposing that wealth is the end-goal (nor, mind you, was Weber). We’re both proposing that the reality of this rational existence is hard work. The result is wealth.

For Weber, the historical emphasis on the value of hard work was born of the Protestant Reformation circa the early 1500s (think back to 10th grade history, Martin Luther nailing his Theses and the resultant religious uproar in Europe). Protestantism, notably its Calvinist manifestation, according to Weber, emphasized the value of all work – including and particularly secular work – as being extremely important and a path to personal salvation. That is, secular work was for God, too.

Weber contended that this attitude ultimately led to the glorification of secular work and the groundswell of capitalistic enterprise that occurred in countries where Protestantism was embraced (think northern Germany, England, the Benelux countries – places where the Industrial Revolution was taking off by the 18th century). Ultimately, this ethic flowed to America’s capitalistic beginnings and Protestant predilections.

While an emphasis on the inherent value of hard work is the first step, it is an outgrowth of this Protestant Ethic that is the necessary component in transforming America’s attitude towards our challenging economic environment: austerity. Wealth was not meant to be gaudy or filled with showy pageantry, or as Protestants would describe Catholic churches, filled with Popery. Like the austere churches in which Protestants worshipped, wealth demonstrated that those with it worked hard for what they believed in. They did not have to flaunt this wealth for it to be the natural and deserved outcome of their devotion to hard work. In fact, it was considered all the more commendable to live within humble means – to embrace austerity.

The New American Ethic

Hard Work and Austerity are exactly what we need in our current economic situation.

We need to see the value in working hard for what we have. I know that unemployment is high. In fact, it’s higher than what’s reported by probably something near to 150% due to contractors never having been on employment books and people losing benefits due to the length of time they’ve been out of the workforce. But that’s nearly 15% of the population that desperately needs to embrace what I am terming the New American Ethic.

We need a return to respecting the value of hard work and the entrepreneurial capitalistic enterprise that built this country in the first place. Starting a business is not for everyone, but there is tons of work to be done and had that does not involve conventional employment at a big company. Part of our problem in finding and doing this work is our attitude, though: that the only employment worth having is that which pays a standard and acceptable salary (what we can “flaunt,” if you will, or share proudly at our Thanksgiving tables with relatives who judge us). But this is wrong. We must rethink our emphasis on valuing the money and value the hard work instead.

This is not to pretend that it doesn’t take money to feed a family, but I’m not suggesting that we quit well-paying jobs for the noble feelings that could come with hard work and having less. I’m saying that all of us – from the unemployed to the 1% – need to think differently about our values in order to do two things. The first is rethinking the ways that we’re going to get America back to work, and the second is preventing ourselves from spiraling further towards economic disaster by not depending any longer on the broken systems we have in place for pensions, social security, retirement and future benefits. People’s retirement investments are not what we thought they would be, and pension funds are failing left and right.

In 2010, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp paid $5.6 billion in benefits for people with failed pension plans. The government is paying this money, which means that we are paying to fund other people’s underfunded pensions even though we have to make personal retirement sacrifices in the meantime. This is not sustainable, and if we’re going to stop relying on these increasingly broken and failed systems we’re going to need to rethink our attitude towards work and wealth.

For the Right Reasons

Coupled with an emphasis on the pleasure and value of austerity – doing more with less and living within humble means – the New American Ethic is one that values hard work for the pleasure and sake of that hard work. If we don’t start living that way we are going to die poorer and considerably less happy about it than we otherwise could be.

Our country needs to embrace this attitude, not as a mandate from above, but as a groundswell from the bottom up – the only way such a movement can work. Every individual needs to see the value of his time, his hands and his mind, and put all three to work in whatever way he can – not for riches or glory or as the Protestant Ethic would contend, God, but for himself, his family and our collective future.

It is this kind of movement, towards a New American Ethic, that will get us through these tough years and return the American economy to its position of power and success – but more sustainably this time. It is also these values that we can share with the world in order that we may all build and work ourselves towards a better future.

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What the Boogeyman and the Economy Have in Common

Our economy has had its ups and downs in recent months and years. The experts say that we can’t technically have a double-dip recession because of the time that has passed since the official end of the first recession, but in my opinion, we’re not going to enter a double-dip recession because we never got out of the first one.

Definitions are important and valid, but at the end of the day the economy is an idea, and a recession is one shade of our attitude towards this idea, not simply a result of unemployment, debt, an unbalanced budget, and impotent spending.

What’s In Our Heads

If the economy is an idea, then we must believe in the idea for it to be and work. That is not to say that the idea, in this case the economy, does not exist without our belief in it, but that our belief in and about it colors the way the economy affects us and causes us to behave. Just consider the erraticism of the stock market recently and why I contended it’s behaving this way (click here).

For instance, when people believe that the economy is good, they are more inclined to spend. Why not? many figure. Things are looking up; the job market and salaries are rising; others around me are spending; deals are good.

However, when we’re told that we’re in a recession, that unemployment is at record highs, that the stock market is all over the place, that this or that company is not even giving cost-of-living wage increases, we’re inclined to use the phrase “tighten our belts” more often, spend less on credit cards, hedge our bets at work by doing more for the same pay, and generally become more fiscally conservative with our personal budgets.

All of this is fine and natural, but it’s important to remember the power the economy has as an idea on a very personal level. After all, plenty of people don’t have jobs in good economies, too, and opt to spend less for various reasons and feel like things aren’t great from a monetary perspective. When the economy is bad, though, this is just happening to more individuals, and on the aggregate level the perception becomes greater that the economy is bad.

A Booga Booga Booga

Consider the Boogeyman.

Kids are afraid of the Boogeyman not because they’ve seen him and he’s affected their lives in a physical fashion. He doesn’t really come out of their closets or from underneath their beds when parents leave the room. He’s terrifying as an idea because the environment is scary – e.g. it’s dark, noises sound stranger at night, parents aren’t around to protect kids, etc. – and because kids can’t even imagine all of the terrible things he will do to them if he finds them. Thus, kids cry and get upset and run to mommy and daddy. They are reacting to an idea that affects them because they believe that it has power.

In order for the idea of the Boogeyman to work, kids must have faith in it, and the same goes for our economy. In order for it to work, we must have faith in it.

When we allow the aggregate noise of those disappointed with the economy to make us all afraid of its power and badness, we all take the actions and attitude that further cripple the economy. It’s a spiral. We lose faith in the economy’s power to be strong and do right by us, and that’s part of what the economy is: our reaction to it. It has power as an idea.

Stand Up to the Idea

We are in a recession, but for most of us, it’s the idea of the economy rather than a lost job or failed business that keeps us in this recession mindset. Rather than dread the recession and lose faith in the economy, I contend that we need to change our attitude towards it. We need to prize austerity and appreciate the positive effects this environment can have on our fiscal responsibility and understanding of the things we do have.

Consider the Boogeyman again. It is the kid who braves the night alone instead of crying to his parents, believing that the Boogeyman is always on the brink of getting him, who gets more courageous every night, increasingly able to withstand the fears of lurking dread. Let’s stop whining about the horrors of this economy and getting wrapped up in the definitions of a recession.

Now it’s about how we react to this recession that matters.

How have you been reacting – both mentally and practically – to our economic climate?

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Congratulations, Curt

I want to dedicate this post to my partner, Curt Friedberg, who was just given the Turnaround Management Association Award for his “outstanding accomplishments” turnaround around USA Dry Van Logistics.

This is GGG’s sixth TMA Award, and I’m incredibly proud of Curt for earning it.

Congratulations, Curt!

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The Rotten Ratio: Sales = Debt

Every industry and business has interesting ratios and rates that are relevant to it. For e-commerce, returns are around 8%; the average conversion rate on a Google Adwords advertisement is 2%, and so forth. I’m sure you can think of some in your business.

In my business, we have a ratio, too: one I call the Rotten Ratio.

The Rotten Ratio is when sales equal debt.

Take a second to think about that: sales equal debt. Believe it or not, I have a number of companies in this situation.

But how does something like that happen? Why do I keep getting hired at this rotten sweet spot?

Well, when business is good and sales are going up, companies decide to buy a new factory, or purchase new equipment -or Ferraris – you know, whatever the necessities are. In order to do this, they borrow money, which at the time makes sense when they look at their sales and growth.

However, as they tend to do, especially when companies and their leaders get distracted, sales slow down, yet that debt is still there. In efforts to sustain their perceived growth, companies take ill-advised steps, which sometimes include more borrowing. At the very least, they don’t pay their debt down, and with sales continuing to slow, they don’t get any closer to doing so.

Numerous warning signs should likely have tipped off CEOs, owners and boards off to the impending crisis that’s coming their way, but as I often say, no one calls me and says, “Lee, I’m going to have a crisis three weeks from Thursday.”

By the time sales and debt meet, it’s become clear to many CEOs that they need to bring in a professional, so when I arrive and start looking over financials, I notice time and time again that sales do indeed equal debt: the Rotten Ratio.

Though you should know that things are turning sour before your sales and your debt numbers meet, by the time they do it’s a pretty good indicator that you’re going to need to change the way you’re doing something and take some drastic steps to resolve your company’s problems. When that happens, seek professional help. Oftentimes it takes a professional to make the truly huge and hard decisions that will save a company.

Remember, turnaround isn’t pretty. We often have to amputate a leg to save a company, and when you’ve just moved into a shiny new factory, selling it off seems like the biggest backwards step and the one thing you’re not willing to do. But that’s why, as a CEO, you have to check your ego at the door, admit you’ve made a mistake (or multiple mistakes) and do whatever needs doing to save your company and the jobs of those who depend on it.

When you’re moving towards the Rotten Ratio, get proactive.

Have you ever seen the Rotten Ratio? What other reasons do you think a company might find itself in this position?

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Stay Occupied, My Friends

The stock market plunged 390 points yesterday. Are you surprised? I’m not, especially in light of the sentiment I’ve been sharing in my recent posts.

Our stock market is a gut reaction to what’s happening out there, and right now, that’s in Europe. The market is only as smart as the last person it talked to.

On Tuesday things were looking up because the Greek Prime Minister had agreed to resign.

However, since we weren’t sure what was going on today with fears that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis was widening, we went into a market spin. Bond yields in Italy surpassed 7%, which means that it may be getting ready to follow in the footsteps of Greece, and of course this was most upsetting for our stock market.

Again, let’s not undermine the complexity of our markets and the systems behind them, but there’s a reason that I keep pointing all of this out to you. This is what it looks like when companies go through crises. Many of them – or at least their CEOs – become as smart as the last person they talked to and the last news they heard.

Learn from the example that international markets are setting for us – and the example of our own market as it reacts to the world’s problems.

Apply this lesson to your personal life, your personal finances and your business’s finances as well. While everyone is selling and reacting and worried, do other things. Go golf or scrapbook or play Metal Gear Solid or whatever it is you crazy kids are doing these days. Get a hobby, but make sure that hobby is not overreacting to the financial situation around you.

Studies consistently show that those who do not get mired in the day to day financial swings around them – and who learn to tune out the related noise – make better longterm financial decisions, are less stressed and are more likely to make their financial goals a reality.

Why? Because they’re not as smart as the last piece of information they heard and they’re not acting on everything! If you bought and sold as fast as the market swung you’d be nothing more than strung out, stressed out and broke.

Instead of the Dos Equis, “Stay thirsty, my friends,” I encourage you to, “Stay occupied, my friends.”

What do you do to tune out the financial noise and distract you from the market’s volatility?

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We Shouldn’t Bail Out Europe – We Should Turn It Around

I’ve been writing a lot lately about Greece, which is representative of the larger problems Europe is having right now. My interest lies in the fact that an organization (in this case a country or group of countries) is spinning out of control in crisis and has little or no idea how to fix things. I think that they need a turnaround guy’s help, or at least his attitude.

I know that there are differences between companies and countries, namely, the number of factors involved. What do I mean by that?

At a company, you can quite often say, If I do x, y will occur. The reason is that there are a limited number of factors involved. I can look at the numbers on a Balance Sheet; I can comb over a P&L. I can say, if we stop spending in these places, the cash saved can pay for the following. With those payments made (generally debt and required expenses), the business can stay afloat, avoid further crisis, ultimately pay its debt down, and emerge to become profitable again. It’s not that easy and requires a lot of creativity and negotiation, but there’s rarely a case I can’t figure out.

Unlike in a country, in a private company you can sell off assets, which is a great way to generate cash you don’t have (in contrast, countries tend to just print money, which is creating an asset they don’t have and that devalues the other assets they do have). Greece, for instance, can’t sell off Thessaloniki. Well, maybe it could, but I don’t know that Romania would pay the asking price (Turkey might).

In addition, in a private company, you don’t have to worry (as much) about gauging people’s reactions. Of course you want buy-in and for the people to be on your side, but at the end of the day, whatever must be done to survive must be done. If it’s not, and the business collapses, the people are laid off and must go elsewhere. If the people in a country disagree with the decision makers, riots can ensue alongside, potentially, political mayhem and anarchy. After all, the people are assumed to comprise the country and therefore be responsible for the debt. If the government dissolves, the people are still there, the country is still there and the debt still, arguably, exists. In business, there’s bankruptcy. In governments, not so much.

As a turnaround professional, I look at all of these country-based crises, and I see the opportunity to turn them around. It would certainly be exceedingly complex and involve unpredictable elements at that level, the likes of which we don’t usually see in companies, but it’s the attitude that’s needed – an attitude that doesn’t seek to make more money out of no money, but one that embraces austerity and survival at all costs.

So without further ado, I’d like to show you a great animated video that does a delightful job summing up the European debt crisis and the proposed solutions. Watch it and tell me we don’t need a turnaround guy in there:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/blog/2011/oct/28/euro-debt-crisis-animated-explanation

What did you think?

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Has Emotion Joined the Greece Conspiracy

Did you read my last post on the emotional fluctuations of the stock market as a result of the financial crisis surrounding Greece? Well, the fickle and emotionally volatile market has struck again.

On Thursday morning EST, the Greek Prime Minister announced that he was shelving his controversial referendum plan. Surely his initial inclination to conduct this referendum was to make sure that the people understood – and supported the fact – that their hands would be tied by the rest of Europe if they agreed to accept the plan that had been proposed. My hunch is that the rest of Europe slapped Greece around behind the scenes a bit, and Greece backed down, realizing that the only way to save itself – and potentially the rest of Europe if it went down the toilet – was to accept the plan.

That said, the American market loved that the referendum was off and the plan was on. Once again, faith was renewed in economic recovery. Hooray.

Up and down and up and down. Multiple fluctuations between 1 and 2% day after day and week after week, all because of an emotional reaction to a situation materializing in Greece. 

Market fluctuations are normal, but can’t they reflect the actual state of the economy and business? Must they be tied to the whimsical reactions of our emotions towards the ideas of Greece’s situation? Do you hear the vagueness in that last sentence? That’s because it represents the tenuous connection between our stock market and Greece’s referendum.

Once again, I reiterate: you can’t be as smart as the last person you talked to. It’s not healthy. It’s not safe. 

Take some balancing medication.

Do not allow your plans and your feelings and your actions to oscillate dangerously every time you hear something new. Learn to process information collectively and act on its aggregate.

Our reactions to the situation in Greece and Europe are a roller coaster – and not the fun kind. They’re the kind you get on after too much funnel cake and Coke and that are a little too rickety. Have the emotional maturity to know when not to get on that roller coaster. Watch your friends and strangers get on. Keep your cool and and make wise decisions when faced with crisis all around you.

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How Greece and the Stock Market are Conspiring Against You

If you’re a news person or you follow finance then you’re no doubt already aware of the situation in Greece. That country is a mess. It’s debt is astronomical; it has no capacity to repay; the political situation is volatile at best; there are mass protests, and nobody has any idea what to do. That’s my definition of a mess.

Let’s Help or Face the Mess Ourselves

In order to prevent some kind of catastrophic ruin that affects the governments and finances of the rest of Europe – after all, Greece is on the Euro and its economy is intimately tied to the rest of the continent – European leaders have been working on some kind of deal to manage Greece’s debt (a large part of which they’ll just dismiss or fund) and get its economy back on track.

And Greece isn’t the only European country riding this roller coaster. It’s just got it the worst right now and is in the lime light. Spain, Italy and others are also going through quite a bad spot.

With the state of the world’s economic intimacy, we’re all affected by the situations around the world. Hardly a country is free from the ripple effects dealt by other members of our global union. But what’s fascinated me recently is the degree to which that intimacy is more emotional than logical.

Up and Down and Up and Down

As I’ve watched the stock market plummet and rebound over the past month, I’ve seen that movement tied disturbingly to our reactions to Greece’s economic situation.

When news came that Greece was tanking and talks were stalled, the market dropped. Last week, as news landed that Europe had reached an agreement on how to bail Greece out, the market rallied 340 points. Yesterday, the market closed down nearly 300 points. Here’s how CNN explained it:

“New fears about the fate of the European rescue plan reverberated through stock markets in the United States and around the world Tuesday. Following European markets, U.S. stocks ended sharply lower across the board. Bank stocks were hit especially hard. The bad news was propelled by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s surprise announcement that he would put his country’s participation in last week’s European debt plan to a voter referendum.”

Now, I understand that the stock market is not merely a bunch of mercurial people making decisions but an enormous number of trades made on the backs of incredibly complicated financial equations and algorithms, but when it swings so violently back and forth at news about Greece, I can’t help but think that things are getting a little ridiculous. And this is just news, mind you. Nothing is actually happening in any of these instances. A deal was reached but no money moved. A referendum was proposed but no vote actually taken. These may as well be rumors for the bearings they should have!

Don’t Be As Smart As the Last Person You Talked To

This reminds me of the business leaders I’ve dealt with who change their entire course of action every time they talk to someone. As I pointed out in my 5 Foolish Faux Pas of CEOs in Crisis, some CEOs are only as smart as the last person they spoke to. That’s what our economy feels like: as though it’s only as strong or relevant as the last thing it heard.

And I don’t want you to be this way!

Making plans and sticking to them is an important part of being a good leader and developing and growing a sustainable business. It’s especially important when you’re in a crisis. You can’t be flopping all over the place in rough times. Of course you change course when things are going wrong and you actually take the time to evaluate the situation, but if you’re changing plans after every conversation your people will lose faith in you and nothing will ever get done.

How do you keep focused when things around you get topsy turvy?