As I was reading John Hagel's post this morning on Pareto Paring (in a nutshell: applying the 80/20 rule to your business to figure out what to cut) a question occurred to me: Do any executives really only plan for sudden downturns after they happen?
Maybe I have a naive view, but I tend to assume that the executive management of any company has a model for their business that can take as inputs various economic factors and has as outputs the adjustments the company will need to make to remain at optimal production. I can assure you that ExxonMobil knows exactly how they would handle $20 oil. And $200 oil. And everything in between.
If you're running a business, do you find yourself reacting to the current economic crisis by looking around and wondering, "What do we do now?" If so, you should consider what you'll be doing when the situation changes dramatically yet again. Because if recent history is any indicator, the only constant we can count on is change. Big change.

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