The autumn of our crisis…

When this autumn began I wrote an article about “the news of the autumn”. And I was concluding that article saying that certainly it will not be a monotonous autumn, respectively that we will have many news, many challenges and most likely many opportunities well-matched to autumn’s colours.

Here we are, after just two months and this autumn has proven to be more different on economical level than previous ones. Moreover the crisis we have begun to enter has proven to be extreme and on global level, deeply shaking the entire international financial system and keeping to shake the global economy. Unfortunately this is not only an autumn crisis but a deeper one and with long-lasting effects.

When this autumn began I wrote an article about “the news of the autumn”. And I was concluding that article saying that certainly it will not be a monotonous autumn, respectively that we will have many news, many challenges and most likely many opportunities well-matched to autumn’s colours.

Here we are, after just two months and this autumn has proven to be more different on economical level than previous ones. Moreover the crisis we have begun to enter has proven to be extreme and on global level, deeply shaking the entire international financial system and keeping to shake the global economy. Unfortunately this is not only an autumn crisis but a deeper one and with long-lasting effects.

My intention is not to make comments on the causes of actual crisis. There are many present-day articles about it. I would like to talk about how completely unprepared we are in order to deal with this issue and how irresponsibly we look at this reality, at least in Romania.

We always talk about a company’s long-term vision during training programs of “strategic planning”, about the capacity to anticipate crises and how to deal with, about the need of always having a backup plan for crisis situations, so called plan B (or sometimes even plan C and D…). These last days I was amazed to see how unprepared were many multinational companies to deal with this crisis and how totally unprepared are to confront with “something else” than what used to appear in the prediction rapports of their own analysts. This lack of vision and backup plans for these kinds of crisis situations has thrown an entire world in chaos, first of all revealing a total lack of social responsibility within companies, mostly those from the financial and banking sector.

And this crisis is still a long way from ending. I could say it has only begun, because we are referring to a chain reaction that will gradually reach to all economy’s areas and will last for at least two years until we will reach again a period of economical stability and a real increment.

Nonetheless we see many companies that do nothing to prevent the negative effects of this crisis, we see many managers completely irresponsible who are convinced their “ship” cannot sink, cannot be affected by the crisis and this way they jeopardize the companies because of their own pride. We see many irresponsible employees totally ignoring this crisis moment and instead of being united asking themselves “how could I do my job better so my company will overcome this crisis?” they keep having unreasonable demands, forcing their company on a razor edge. We see union representatives, whose main role would be to make sure about employees’ welfare and jobs’ security, having a huge social responsibility, nevertheless keep on forcing employers and government hand and seeming not to understand that their exaggeration in such moments will actually lead to the loss of more and more working places.

What could we say more about the irresponsibility of some political figures, for example the President of Romania who is encouraging some extreme populist measures now that election campaign is anywhere near, measures that would have a negative impact on the economy in any context but at this time all together with present crisis will only set light to this bomb?Romania is only at the beginning of this crisis! For many this crisis is not visible yet. Despite this, every day we begin to hear about companies that are closing down, about foreign companies that shut down their operations in Romania, about Romanian companies that cannot resist this crisis because the lack of liquidity and lack of vision. If to all these we will add the dramatic increase of budgetary default and putting back in function “the monetary press” to sustain the populist promises of demagogue politicians, then this means we will prove a complete lack of social responsibility and even cynicism.

Even USA has an election campaign going on now. Maybe is more aggressive than ours. But we have seen there opposite parties shaking hands in order to find a rescue plan for their country, we have seen two candidates for the United States presidency shaking hands to find solutions concerning this crisis. Unfortunately this is not Romania’s case. Here the lack of social responsibility is huge and the President of Romania who would have to represent a main factor of stability in such situations is actually the one throwing our country into the middle of this crisis. Why? Pride, pure and simple… Could you believe such a thing in these tense moments? I am not a fan of Prime Minister Tăriceanu and never have been. But from my point of view he deserves a 10 for the way he has behaved during last week and for taking full responsibility of some no populist measures with the purpose to diminish the negative effects of this crisis.

Coming back to “the autumn of our crisis” we all are wondering what are we suppose to do in these moments. My opinion is that we should prepare for the worst, to oversee our plans in order to resist on the market until the effects of crisis will quiet down without having a complete defensive attitude but also observing the opportunities the crisis will show us. My opinion is that companies that will do nothing will perish. Those that will do something just to conserve and to pass this moment, with little luck they will survive. And those that will be proactive, thinking over their plans not just in the sense of protecting but to identify opportunities will be the real winners of this crisis, and they will become stronger.

I conclude wishing all of you to be a part of the third category! So hope to meet you all again, in “the spring of this crisis”!