Instead, recession-shy buyers are now tightening their belts, zipping their wallets, and putting off…putting off…putting off that big purchase or commitment they were hoping to make. In this difficult economic environment, some of the world’s best-established companies and brands have found themselves struggling to stay afloat.
Incredibly, though, others seem to be doing better than ever. How is this possible? According to William D. Green, chairman and CEO of Accenture, today’s most successful companies are the ones that have kept a laser focus on performance. “High performance is still about market focus and positioning, your distinctive capabilities, and your people—what we call ‘performance anatomy,’” he says. “There’s lots of panic right now, lots of concern and fear. That’s natural. But at the end of the day, the game doesn’t change.”
Not in the big picture, at least. Looking at the specifics of today’s business environment, Green admits that leaders do face one major change: the ever-increasing globalization of commerce. “If we think about competition, we tend to think about the guy next door. But the people we really have to worry about now have names you can’t pronounce, and they’re from places you’ve never been. I think it’s fundamental in tough economic times to keep your eye on the puck and realize that five years from now, it’s not going to be in North America.”
This insight doesn’t come as news to Bradbury H. Anderson, vice chairman and CEO of Best Buy Co., Inc. Under Anderson’s guidance, Best Buy has enjoyed explosive worldwide growth in recent years. This growth, says Anderson, has improved not only the organization’s balance sheets but also its abilities. “Wherever we go globally, we come back with more knowledge and more capability as an enterprise. The intellectual content we have gained globally has been really beneficial to the company,” he explains.
This idea is beautifully simple and logical. The reality, however, can be significantly more difficult. As Green points out, organizations can’t just open foreign branches and expect to reap easy rewards. They must also be prepared to seek out and absorb input from the countries and cultures they touch. “Some people want to take their current operating models and their view of the customers and just move them abroad. Those people really struggle with global expansion,” Green says. “Successful companies, on the other hand, are figuring out how to be both globally efficient and locally responsive. And through all that, they must also leverage technology and know-how around the world as quickly as possible.”
Technology, indeed, has been a key to Best Buy’s global success. Anderson is quick to credit the company’s unusually young work force in part for this situation. “Our employees have grown up during a time, technologically speaking, when almost any information was available easily and cheaply. The ability to disseminate whatever you think is also immediately available. We have let that situation grow organically, and we’re using the insight we grab from that community,” he explains. “There’s a huge value proposition in companies that make themselves more porous. In our company, for instance, there was a point where one team ran dry in terms of content. We found the answers in another country. We couldn’t have done that if we had a closed-door communication system.”