Implementing the Quick Solutions

Perhaps the gravest mistake in hazardous times is to stand by helplessly believing that the crisis will take its toll anyway. The 33 quick solutions and the numerous case studies described in the previous chapters demonstrate that companies are not defenseless against the crisis but can successfully tackle it. Siemens CEO Peter Loescher warns against resignation, “We managers have to put all our strength into fighting the crisis with confidence. We must not confine ourselves to saying that we don’t know what’s ahead and that we see nothing but a wall of fog.”1 To get the best out of difficult circumstances, companies have to pull out all the stops and mobilize the three profit drivers: cost, price, and sales volume. A wide array of methods and instruments are available: flexible cost-cutting instead of mass firings, adapting to customers’ changing needs, mobilizing the sales energies, limiting supply, streamlining the product line, more sophisticated price structures, creative services, and many more. When it comes to diagnosis, decisions, and implementation, speed is of the essence. For many companies it’s a matter of survival. Solutions that won’t work for a year or two are of little value in face of the imminent danger.