Reading a CNN report on the current tribulations of the Japanese economy (currently in the throes of its worst economic crisis since the Second World War, with GDP falling at an annual rate of 12.7% – yeah, I did a double-take too – in Q408 ) I found myself musing once again on the consolatory qualities of all being in the same pickle-jar/handcart/frying-pan/paddleless-vessel-up-an-unsavoury-creek (select your own metaphor). It’s an interesting quirk of human nature that somehow things always seem that little bit less bleak if you’re in company; being hit by Hurricane Credit Crunch is pretty miserable but there is nonetheless some small comfort in knowing that we’re most of us in the same capsized boat.
A variant on that, of course – and one which is both less wretched and more useful in the long term – is the boost to one’s mental wellbeing that comes from knowing that even if nobody else is in the same situation as you are right there and then, people have walked/swum/plunged that way before. The consolation that comes from being only the latest down that particular path might be comparatively minimal (particularly if it’s the path to the scaffold) but the opportunity to learn from others’ experiences in an attempt to get off the path altogether could be invaluable – hence the popularity of our “If I could do it all again…” series, among much else.
One of the problems with the current crisis, of course, is that there really hasn’t been anything quite like it before – so while we can scrabble about (to return to the nautical metaphor) in the ocean of memory looking for a few Great Depression-era planks onto which to grab, we’re not really sure how buoyant they are anyway. But there’s another advantage of being in the same boat together, clearly: if we work together, we can pool resources and ideas in an attempt to keep the boat on the surface long enough to reach dry land. So let’s embrace the idea of a concerted effort, and leave consolation to the philosophers. And then if the effort fails anyway at least a) we’ll have tried and b) we’ll all be able to spell “SOS” in plenty of different languages as we all go down together.
(If all of that seems a little too serious for a Monday morning, try this instead.)
PS: Meant to put this out last week but the curse of Friday 13th struck my computer: for those of you who don’t know (and why not?) SSON has teamed up with The Hackett Group to offer a special service center benchmark study which aims to assist executives objectively assess how well their service center or centers are performing in relation to peer company service delivery model centers and between service delivery models. You can find out more information on the benefits of participation, and how to sign up, here.
PPS: The curse of Friday 13th also meant I couldn’t plug last Friday’s Weekly Wrap, a problem which I can, to general delight, resolve here.
Tags: benchmarking, crisis, downturn, economic, Hackett, Japan, Outsourcing, Shared Services, sharedservices, sourcing, SSON, Weekly Wrap
