James Drogan

SupplyChainBrain brings a brief report on the Boston Consulting Group Global Survey: Business Executives Expect Difficult Times to Continue in 2010.   The report concludes that business executives are failing to plan tough, defensive actions.  Many businesses are underestimating the enduring legacy of the great recession: a slow-growth economy. market leaders are looking ahead and taking dramatic steps to succeed, but most are focusing on the short term and skirting tough decisions.

What's missing here, at least in this abbreviated version, is a deeper look at why, in the opinion of BCG, these business executives are failing to do what BCG thinks needs to be done.  So, to those of you who are my students, give some thought to the question "Why?"

A second point I would make is that it is helpful to making decisions if one has a number of views of the situation.  BCG is a reputable organization and value ought to be attached to what they have to say.

From Conversations with Dave comes my comment

Third and last point.  There is considerable concern, rightly so, regarding unemployment.  The long term health of any society depends upon employment that generates income that can accumulate into wealth which is then invested, and so the wheel turns.  It seems to me that the general feeling is that we can stimulate our way out of this.  That may be true, but some of the ways in which this stimulus is being applied (see Senator McCain's current rants on this subject) are atrocious.  The stimulus needs to be applied to industries with true, long term potential value.  We need to recognize that David Ricardo's observations still ring true in many ways and what got us to here is not going to get us to there.  Protectionism and nationalism is not, regardless of what other countries may do, a long term fix.  Obama has advanced some good ideas on this and they need to be taken more seriously (J. Drogan, personal communications, December 13, 2009).

The December 21 & 28 edition of The New Yorker brings Green Giant describing China's aggressive movement into industries with true, long term potential value.  This causes me to suggest that overcommitment to ideaology and purity may have some associated risks that need to be fully understood.

America can't make things because managers all learn finance instead of production provides one more thread in the complexity and confusion of the American business model.  In attempt to find the engineers we need we turn to the H1B visa program which, of course, is under the domain of the Conlobs (congress plus lobbyists) in Washington.

I have blogged as well as posted articles of more substance on the importance of ethics and how it is a foundation stone upon which rests all else of what we do.

I refer you to "Climate Scientist Steps Down" in the December 2, 2009 edition of The Wall Street Journal for yet another example of the importance of ethical behavior.  I hold that without a strong ethical base not much else matters.

I also draw your attention to Drogan's Third Law: Never put things in an e-mail you would not like to hear read in court.  This is not a summons to hide evil, but rather to suggest that what you think may be innocuous (although the example given in the Journal article does not seem to fall into this class) can almost always be interpreted by others in ways that may not reflect yuour meaning.