Crisis, opportunities, and change

The economic downturn is finally hitting more tangible and personal levels. Our unit at work began negotiations to "streamline" its operations (as can be read from Finnish newspapers). According to the Finnish labor legislation, there is a six week long consultation period during which representatives from the employers and the employees attempt to negotiate the specifics of the arrangements.

Interestingly enough I was talking with a few people about this situation and the general attitude people have is negative. That's not very surprising per se, but if you do the math and carefully plan different scenarios, at least I noticed that getting laid off might not even be the worst possible scenario. Amidst the crisis and the events that have begun to unfold, there are plenty of opportunities. The driver of all this is change: change in the market place, change in the organization and competences, change in the financial setup, and so on. Change isn't inherently good or bad. It can have good resulting effects or bad resulting effects. Most often both, depending on the perspective you take.

A major reason why people think negatively of layoffs is that they fear change, because there is always a deal of uncertainty involved. And more often than not people equate uncertainty with lack of visibility to the future. But in many cases the situation can be helped merely by looking objectively and mapping out the future according to different assumptions. And eventually you'll notice that there are some scenarios with suboptimal results and others with much better results. But during the process you also make the fog a bit less thick and enhance your visibility about different situations. And more importantly, you can also identify the different crossroads and decision points that you can actually influence yourself.

I won't go into my thinking on the current subject per se, as that I fear does not really fit the scope of this blog. As with poker, often in times of tight situations its better to keep your cards to yourself rather than spilling all the beans. Sufficient to say, I'm not very worried about the current situation. There are one or two scenarios that may have clearly negative impacts, but the probabilities of those materializing are very slim (not least because they're the ones the I can actually influence very well myself). But besides those, there are a few paths which are more probable in regards to how the events might unfold, and none of these paths is especially poor.

And as a closing thought, one of the key things here is flexibility, both in strategy as well as operations. If you lose your flexibility, then you're a sitting duck. As long as you have degrees of freedom left, you are still able to execute maneuvers and attempt to flank the situation and sieze the moment.