Profitable Business Owners

Sit back and reflect on every day stories from organizations on cost-based downsizing. All have reasons; reducing bench strength or poor performers, rationalizing businesses, managing costs through supply chain, expense management or sheer alteration to the Target Operating Model to focus on a strategy led structure. Each of them has a valid story. To me this act of cost optimization, including an unfortunate act of restructuring, is not a sin, it is a process that corporate sector can and should learn to do. BUT, only after they have exhausted every other cost optimization choice. Not at periodic intervals or when pushed to a corner because of financial results die the next quarter, but as a way of life. Just as how hiring, cash flow management, customer satisfaction & asset acquisition is a vital element of growth, so is optimization, to stay healthy at all times. Business cycles and its impact on shareholder value are not new to the world of economics. But the science & art of doing so gracefully is a much-needed area of learning.