To state the obvious: Market conditions are “trying.”
While things will get sorted out, as they always seem to do, let’s face it: (1) We don’t know when that’s going to happen, and (2) some companies likely won’t make it until then.
So, on one hand, there’s uncertainty; on the other, there’s the unknown. Neither is good for business.
But this isn’t new. All industries, including ours (again, to state the obvious), have faced all manner of challenges, obstacles, and headwinds over the years. We can’t control international trade policies or new competition. Those exterior conditions will exist, like it or not.
What we can control is how we address them.
In tough times, some companies double down on the familiar, figuring that doing what they have the deepest capability to do will provide them with an advantage.
But external conditions signal change – and change can’t be overcome by doing the same thing, only harder.
In the early days of the automobile, an iron hand crank on the front of the car needed to be rotated to start it. Unfortunately, it tended to kick back and break bones. One could address this issue by getting stronger – keep cranking but more robustly. Or one could approach it like Charles Kettering and invent the electric self-starter.
Kettering, whose inventions ranged from the electric cash register to incubators for premature infants, once said:
“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”
This was especially true in cases where people were willing to innovate rather than continue addressing challenges with existing methods. Indeed, challenging times can benefit those willing to take some calculated risks.
When I ran an automation company, I knew headwinds were always on the horizon – I just never knew when they’d arrive. So, I worked to position our company to stand out when others would batten down their hatches.
We invested in technologies to show customers – or potential customers – that we had the capacity they needed when their orders changed. We set up an extensive metrology operation to demonstrate how seriously we took quality and that our reports and numbers were dependable. We made sure we were different in beneficial ways.
I spent a tremendous amount of time traveling to trade shows around the world, seeing what equipment and tooling were available. I toured other operations to see what companies were doing and what might be valuable to us.
It would have been easier – and less expensive – to stay home. But doing so would have left the organization vulnerable to the headwinds I knew would come.
I previously mentioned “calculated risks.” By learning and observing what other companies were doing, I gained insights into how to achieve a competitive advantage over our competitors. That is the “calculated” part. The “risk” was making an investment that might not pay off – if customers or prospects failed to see the advantage.
But it was a matter of weighing the doing and the stasis. And when the winds blow hard, if you’re not moving forward, you’re being pushed back.
There is another danger associated with addressing change. Someone will do something risky. But they do it. Once. That may be laudable in the moment, especially if it’s successful; but the moment moves on, and the company stops doing it. There must be persistence.
Another American inventor, Walter Shewhart of Bell Labs, who developed statistical process control and control charts, introduced the plan-do-check-act cycle. PDCA is iterative. Continuous improvement doesn’t happen once. You’ve got to keep at it.
Similarly, people thinking they know everything is a problem. Technology is moving far too fast for anyone to imagine that what they learned at a seminar a couple years ago is sufficient. Like the PDCA cycle, learning never ends.
Finally, there is the all-too-common belief that “good enough” is good enough. Doing what your competitors are doing – maybe a little better but still about the same – puts everyone into the same bucket. Unfortunately for everyone in this bucket, because everything is about equal, customers can exert serious price pressure.
But if a company has capabilities that set it apart – the best people, the best equipment – price pressure can’t be applied as severely because customers recognize the difference.
And while none of this stops change, at least it allows a company to remain resilient in the face of it.
To read the rest of the Industry Outlook Issue of MT Magazine, click here.
