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How to Spot Trouble -- Before It Hits Your Company

May 21st, 2009 @ 8:44 am

2 Comments

Categories: Academics, Group Dynamics, Managment, Research, Risk Management, Strategy

Tags: Signal, Subprime Mortgage, Subprime Mortgage Crisis, Stacy Blackman

“I should have seen it coming.”

How many times have you uttered that phrase after you’ve been blindsided by trouble, realizing that the signs were there all along?

The recent subprime mortgage crisis is a good example of a collective “we should have seen it coming.” The recent MIT Sloan Management Review article “How to Make Sense of Weak Signals“ by Wharton professors Paul J.H. Schoemaker and George S. Day asks how key players like Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch missed the signs. The answer:

“Organizations get blindsided not so much because decision makers aren’t seeing signals, but because they jump to the most convenient or plausible conclusion,” they write.

So how can you interpret signals of pending problems, even if those signals aren’t very clear?

  • 1. Minimize biases: We constantly reshape reality to fit our personal beliefs: These jeans must have shrunk, because there’s no way I gained weight. Organizational beliefs work the same way, which often blinds us to pending problems. Spreading decision making throughout the company and creating task forces to monitor potential dangers can combat this tendency, according to the authors.
  • 2. Apply multiple search methods and find overlapping results: Organizations often force new and ambiguous information to fit the existing course of action. Citing the faulty intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, the authors advocate testing several hypotheses and listening to the organizational grapevine as ways to gather new points of view.
  • 3. Use different frameworks: Groupthink can lead to a convenient obscuring of potential problems, so encouraging constructive conflict within the organization, seeking out the wisdom of experienced managers and trusting your own intuition can lead to broader perspectives. The more expansive your horizons, the better the chance you’ll see trouble coming and be able to respond proactively.

Storm image courtesy of Flickr user are you my rik, CC 2.0

 
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  •  
    1

    WORLDWIDESHARES

    05/22/09 | Report as spam

    RE: How to Spot Trouble -- Before It Hits Your Company

    INDIA + CHINA = A market of more than 2,4 billion people

    INDIA has its toughest decision ahead.
    A huge impact decision on future events that will determine the next hegemony period in the globe.

    The decision to take is very clear:

    INDIA..., Are you going to join CHINA in your future developments , ... or are you going to lean on US as your ally,... or in a third place, you are going to decide to continue to run the race to world?s most powerful country, independently ???

    A) Joining CHINA:

    INDIA+CHINA would be the end of US power, not only as the biggest economy on earth, but militarily, socially, and politically.
    USDollar would lose its status as the reference currency in worldwide markets, and a new ASIAN power would emerge.

    Tight collaboration between INDIA and CHINA is not an easy task. Obviously, the beginning would be in economic terms, that is, to become the world biggest "outsourcing" area.

    Second, and very obvious, the highest domestic market in terms of consumer rates, 2.4 billion people is a much bigger chunk than any other individual market in the world.

    Big international corporations would be interested in playing their strategies there, and obviously, the jobless claims in these 2 countries would fall to minimums, allowing a much better domestic consumer performance, and the erradication of poverty and transition from countryside to cities, with almost no public spending from these 2 governments, would be a fact.

    CHINA has made the first step in this idea, asking INDIA to share the prominent and lucrative OUTSOURCING market.

    INDIA is the OUTSOURCER by excellence. Good engineer schools, meaning an incredible added value to big decentralized foreign corporations, depending on INDIA as its main OUTSOURCING supplier.


    b) US as an ally:

    US cannot lose this train.
    USSR cold war is over, but a fiercest one is beginning. The battle to determine who is going to become the next most powerful nation during the next centuries.

    This is a democratic battle. A social, political and economic battle, in a now bipolar world.

    JAPAN will soon lose its position in the ranking, and CHINA, INDIA will be running behind US .

    US will have to use PAKISTAN matter to get closer to INDIA. But, I think this will not be enough. There must be more joining agreements in terms of manufacture, defense, IT, and infraestructure projects.

    US must use all its influence power to convince INDIA they must run this race together.



    c) INDIA running independently:

    INDIA has also the choice to continue developing its economy, serving either CHINA and US as main and preferred customers.
    It can become the referee of the "2 big" match.

    INDIA alone has 2,1 billion people. So, it is not a little market to feed. And it is not a little market either to focus on its domestic consumer rates future evolution.

    INDIA has shown the world why BOLLYWOOD produces now more films than US HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS, it has also shown us the incredible MUMBAI development in terms of financial and industrial power, the high class ENGINEER SCHOOLS, the steel industry, the technology-edged IT companies born in the last 5 years, etc...

    A good engineer work base, value added workers, and a political change in the horizon.

    Farewell to the old politicians, let?s welcome the "blackberries" !!!. Rahul Gandhi, is the best example of this new generation of politicians, that in 5-6 years, will be ready to lead.
    Till now, indian politicians have been well above 70 year old average, INDIA must change this issue to really launch itself into the race of the world hegemony.

    INDIA needs young politicians, with global ideas and perspectives, people with foreign studies that have lived and worked in other countries or cities, have shared other religions and bureaucracies...

    This is another big decision for INDIA. Maybe the critical one.

    Tough decisions ahead for ... That for sure, will determine who will be the next emerging power.




    Jose Luis Revilla Escudero
    Chairman & CEO
    WWShares, Inc
    -Global Wealth Management-
    www.worldwideshares.blogspot.com

  •  
    2

    ggramig

    05/22/09 | Report as spam

    RE: How to Spot Trouble -- Before It Hits Your Company

    This assumes the lack of corporate politics. The reality is that no manager at any level is going to provide feedback that the king has no clothes. Unfortunately, lessons learned have shown managers that C managers perceive the messenger as the problem and shoot them on-sight. Frankness and honesty more often than not result in the manager being shown the way out the door. People at Harvard should be aware that such actions are far more likely to produce a false sence of health business operations. Lesson here is the present debacle, oh we saw it coming, it just wasn't worth sticking our necks out there for it.

    The view from Harvard of Business Street does not always pick up on the nuances and subleties of Business Street realities.

    Greg Gramig
    Project Manager

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