In the midst of unfavorable circumstances, chances to move an organization towards its goals often go unnoticed. Don’t allow adversity to overwhelm you. Instead of becoming engulfed by postwar devastation in Japan, publishing editor Ogawa Kikamatsu used the situation to water the seeds of his own innovation and creativity.
His inspiration came shortly after his country’s surrender. Picking up on the need for his countrymen to manage through the ensuing occupation, he published a Japanese-English conversation manual, even though he had no real proficiency in English. Placing trust in his intuition, he sold 3.5 million copies by the end of 1945.(1)
The lesson here is to analyze your surroundings and develop your contingencies without losing sight of your original goals. It’s all about repositioning your strategy to avoid being blindsided in the future.
Although the need for strategic thinking during challenging economic times is paramount, the task of pondering the economy’s impact on your organization’s strategic outlook should not simply be up to management and those identified as leaders on the org chart. This is unfortunately the case in many organizations where the mere term strategic is exclusively reserved for the upper echelons of management. This is a mindset that could prove to be fatal.
