Ignore the fact that his shirt’s half tucked in and half not. If you don’t work in technology, much less web application development, ignore that too. Ditto the effenheimers that make this keynote Not Safe for Work. This is the most electrifying thirteen-minutes-and-change I’ve seen in quite awhile. (No offense, Mr. President: I thought that the Inauguration speech was pretty darned spiffy, too.)
But if, by the end, you don’t want the recession to end, don’t say you weren’t warned.
I would—with the most humble presumption—add one thing to the overall idea that recessions are when you get ahead of the competition that’s either cowering in its bunker or fled the field altogether.
Anyone—consumer, manager, entrepreneur—who’s been been nicked by a nasty (think 1982) recession knows that it enforces the fiscal discipline and focus that s/he should have had during the comfortable years. Bad recessions make that socially acceptable, too.
But that’s a problem in itself.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that focus and fiscal discipline are bad. I’m saying that there are good and bad ways of regaining those things if you’ve lost them. The worst-case scenario is no different from crash-dieting to shoehorn yourself into a swimsuit by June. The flab comes back in spades in October, doesn’t it? Why? Because you crashed the muscle, not the fat. Cutting fat takes work and diligence and, perhaps most importantly, time. Things that it’s all too easy to convince yourself that you can’t afford right now.
If you can still pay the bills in this economy, congratulations: You’ve (almost) won the lottery. Now the question is, how much of a head-start can you get on the posers who will slink back into your turf when the pickings get a little better? Have you made their work any easier? In other words:
- How many customers did you piss off with your corner-cutting?
- How many of your key people are disgruntled from your draconian mandates?
- How many vendors did you alienate with price squeezes and late payments?
- How much has word of all that gone around?
- Most importantly, how have the rules of the game changed?
When—not if, when—you have to retool for a the next round, you won’t be able to do it alone. Customers, employees and vendors may all need to be brought up to speed if they are expecting the clock to just turn back to the fat times. You won’t be able to guide them across that bridge if they’ve closed their ears to you.
And that, to me, is where the rubber really hits the road for Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote. It’s not enough to understand that (or even how) your game is changing. It’s how you help the people you depend on to understand. And this is where the messenger becomes much more important than the message. You, the instigator or change, have a choice to make. You can be the martinet force-marching your troops over the mountain range. Or you can be the prophet pointing out the Promised Land on the other side. I think it’s a solid bet which group will make the journey faster…and more intact.
So break out that staff and cloak now. (The snowy Charlton Heston beard is optional.)
