QUOTATION 65

ANDREW S. GROVE ON WHY YOU NEED A FLEXIBLE WORKFORCE

Use this to remind you to recruit and train a flexible and responsive workforce.

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) was an entrepreneur, author and Chairman of Intel Corp. Recognising that there is much that does remain constant over the short and medium term, he suggested that:

You need to plan the way a fire department plans: it cannot anticipate where the next fire will be, so it has to shape an energetic and efficient team that is capable of responding to the unanticipated as well as the ordinary event.

Andrew S. Grove

WHAT TO DO

  • My definition of a good budget is ‘a business plan with a price ticket on it.’ Everything that an organisation wants to do in the forthcoming year can be reduced to figures and presented in a budget. Now, unless you go out of business, about 80 per cent of an organisation’s income and expenditure will remain fairly consistent in the short term – up to one year. For example, one of the largest items of expenditure in an organisation is often salaries and wages. This figure can be calculated very accurately. It’s the sort of ordinary events that Grove is referring to.
  • The unexpected events are such things as a huge new order arriving out of the blue, a cancellation of a major order, a massive increase in raw material costs. These are events that are difficult to plan for but they are not that unusual and can be taken account of in your plan by using scenario analysis (see Quotation 64).
  • Black swan events are the truly exceptional events that cannot be anticipated because they have never happened before, e.g. the 9/11 attacks. Such events will always occur out of the blue. To deal with them you need to:
    • Recruit people who are flexible and train existing staff to react quickly to changing events.
    • Avoid being shocked into immobility. Start to ask questions and identify the impact that the event may have on you and your organisation immediately. Don’t wait for the media analysis – get working.
    • While a black swan event can’t be predicted, it is valuable to have a group of people who have expertise in planning for major disasters. This group might be the organisation’s formal emergency planning team or a small ad hoc group that meets occasionally to imagine the effect of significant unpredicted events on the organisation. The mere fact that they have been trying to identify possible disasters means that they are less likely to be frozen into inaction by the real thing than ordinary staff.
  • When planning, build flexibility into your plans (see Quotation 64). The purpose of a plan is to help you reach your objective. It is not meant to be a strait jacket. When events blow you off course, reassess how you will achieve your objective. Be willing to take detours and back roads but always keep in mind your final destination and try to move towards it.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

  • How flexible am I in my thinking about what might occur in the future?
  • How adaptable am I? How well do I adapt to rapidly changing circumstances?
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