Newsletter February 2009
CEO Corner
by Dave Murray
The ‘R’ Word
Recently I was invited to be a speaker in a break-out session at the Business Leaders Northwest Conference. It was both exciting and challenging, and I really enjoyed myself. There were a lot of great ideas for growing business, surviving the economy, cutting costs, and a host of other key tasks that face each and every business owner every day. As you might imagine, a fair amount of what we talked about was framed by a couple of ‘R’ words-recession and recovery. Both seemed to be on the top of everyone’s mind. As I prepared my presentation, however, I felt it was more important to concentrate on another ‘R’ word-relationships, and specifically, on the importance of relationships in IT. Here I’ll go a step farther and talk about why relationships are not only critical in today’s economy, but they’re also integral to business during recovery and the good times thereafter.
Relationships are important during a recession. It might seem counter-intuitive because to some degree, tough times call for tough measures. Our ability to let things go or deal with anything less than outstanding performance is limited when times are tough. We just don’t have the freedom. But, at the same time, we’re all in this together. The economy is tough, but we’re all better able to weather the storm if we work together. Communicating honestly as business partners allows us to help each other where possible. This is true whether
it is through tailoring services so they reduce cost yet still meet the most critical business requirements or simply having an understanding of the constraints under which each of us is working. Of course, by having a strong relationship, we may also find one of our partners can suggest a solution of which we would have never conceived on our own. It all comes down to the simple notion that we’re stronger together than we are alone.
Relationships are vital during recovery as well. Sometimes this is even less obvious because, as we all know; it’s harder to see the little negatives when the general theme is positive. But, as the recovery eventually restarts, opportunities are greater when we can approach them together. It’s not just the benefit of more minds, but the luxury of having specialists collaborating to achieve a common goal. What I mean is that while your expertise may be in building widgets, you may have a partner whose specialty is marketing, or logistics, or even technology. As demand increases, the time we have to meet it shrinks. This means we don’t have the time to recreate the proverbial wheel in areas that are not our forte. Rather than have to wing it or contract outside help, we can instead leverage our partners so that we all can concentrate on what we do best. Keep building a better widget and leave the marketing or logistics, or even IT, to the experts.
Now that we’ve covered how relationships can be key when talking about the two big ‘R’ words—recession and recovery—let’s look past those two immediate concerns and look forward to the good times that will follow. Relationships are still important for all the same reasons. Just because the trials and tribulations of tough economic times may pass, it doesn’t mean we need to change what works. Relationships will still offer all the same advantages: having a trusted partner with a sincere interest in seeing you succeed, enjoying expert-level knowledge and advice when faced with areas outside your main focus, and even just having someone in the same boat with you, prepared to compromise and work through it with you. The value of these things don’t change just because times are better, although it’s sometimes easier to forget them. Relationships are important whether in a recession, recovery, or the strong economy after both.
And so, as I write this, I still feel the privilege of presenting to the conference this week. But I also feel very strongly the privilege of writing to you in this newsletter. It’s not because it’s cool to see my words in writing, or even to think that so many people are reading something I created. Rather, the privilege is to have the relationship with each and every one of you. My ‘R’ word is relationships, and it’s a privilege to talk about it, to write about it, and to live it with our partners.
Hello.
Here’s a quick joke for you: What did winter say to spring? Are you here yet? Here’s to keeping our fingers crossed the answer is yes.
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