Corporate Strategy
End of the crisis: the start of a dream? Will it be so easy?
17-09-2019
The CEDEC difference is in our DNA. CEDEC is composed of experienced professionals who, in their careers, have assumed high-level operational responsibilities, including as business owners. Their commonality? Their desire to help, which they manifest every day with the business owner whom they help in taking on the challenges they face. It is on the basis of this modesty that CEDEC proposes being a vector for success and a guide for achieving Corporate Excellence.
While we are entering a period of economic recovery, some business owners are finding it difficult to make specific (and achievable!) plans for their future. This makes it even more difficult to transmit those plans to their teams. In fact, how can they do so?
In 2008, we entered a crisis period whose effects were felt until very recently. During the nearly ten years of crisis, business leaders primarily sought a way to keep their businesses afloat and ensure profitability, in the best case, or at least break even in the worst case.
It is understandable that in such a context, business owners have had to abandon dreams of expansion and postpone entrepreneurial projects for better times.
However, living almost 10 years of crisis may also mean knowing nothing else...especially in the case of young entrepreneurs who inherited the family business. Business owners who have only known the crisis find themselves today in an unprecedented situation, that of a gradual recovery to growth, with the ability to invest more and with banks less cautious about lending money.
But taking advantage of these positive effects of economic recovery may not be so evident. On the one hand, there is a question of confidence in the future, and on the other, it is important to transmit to employees (and ensure their compliance with) a vision and plans for the future.
This is because employees are key to the evolution and growth of the company. If they have known how to “lay low” during the crisis, for various reasons (attachment to the company, feeling of belonging, sluggish job market, ...), now they have better expectations for the company.
The business owner, therefore, faces various pressures: from their own professional ambitions, but also from their employees and from a market which requires moving from a defensive strategy to a more aggressive strategy. In the case of family businesses, we may add pressure from the family, who want the company to succeed even more and benefit from growth.
In this context, CEDEC can support business owners and help them drive their development projects and develop the stages which will allow them to reach their goals, while addressing the potential difficulties. CEDEC analyzed the various constraints (or opportunities!) facing the business owner, and considers them along with ambitions for growth, the market possibilities, and the level of employee support.
CEDEC can thus create the environment needed to implement a new vision for the company. This involves the business owner embodying leadership and requires strong communication with the whole company. How? By recreating the time and space for discussions between the business owner and their employees, promoting teamwork and controlling internal communication, for example.
In times of crisis, business owners tend to exercise different operational roles; now they must get perspective and delegate these functions to their employees if they want to turn their attention towards strategic projects. With CEDEC’s help, the business owner can redesign their structure around their future plans and, to do so, evolve the skills and resources available.
It's time to act! Do not leave your dreams as an entrepreneur on hold forever!
