In today’s turbulent times, employees are discouraged by the continuing global economic crisis and broader world news, organizations are becoming completely consumed by draconian cost-cutting measures simply to stay afloat, and customers are still finding it difficult to make purchasing decisions. During this period of furious business change, now is the time for business leaders to take the offensive and renew their organizations.

STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION RENEWAL unlocks value in your business by optimizing organizational performance and protecting customer loyalty.  By engaging this process, business leaders align near-term business strategies necessitated by today’s unprecedented economic challenges with not only the desire but also the ability to prosper in the recovery.

Join us for an engaging session on January 28, 2010 at ASTD – Special Division (Organization Development)– where we explore the concepts and share practical tips for renewing your organization!  Learn how to change the game by using this opportunity to renew your business and create a ready platform for growth and innovation in the future.

In this session, we will:

•    Discuss today’s unprecedented economic challenges and our current context for change as the recovery sets in

•    Review the concepts of Strategic Organization Renewal – a proven approach for optimizing organizational performance and protecting customer loyalty

•    Develop specific strategies you can use to put this powerful approach into action and produce better business results before it’s too late.

For more information, click here.

At Plus Delta, we have experienced an ever increasing flow of feedback from our clients and others that the long anticipated economic recovery is happening and the pace of the recovery will increase significantly. The information we have received is corroborated by government figures and statistics – for example: the Consumer Confidence Index rose in December, the first time in over a year; the Monthly Home Sales Prices are up for the 5^th straight month and over the last 3 months have risen nearly 20%; the Gross Domestic Product increased 2.2 percent in the third quarter of 2009 as compared to the 2^nd quarter of 2009.

A recovering economy dictates that your organization must be prepared for changes. Our business climate dramatically changed in 2008 and early 2009 when the U.S. economy nearly came  to a complete halt. Processes in your organization were also changed; people assumed multiple roles while they tried to accomplish the same amount of work as two or more downsized workers.

Getting frustrated by conflicting demands to continue to stabilize your organization through the traditional methods of cost cutting, job layoffs, hiring part time workers, early retirement of older workers, etc.– while trying to ramp up for the arriving economic recovery will do no good.

What is mandatory is that planning must start right now. You must begin to work with your organization to prepare for a long anticipated positive move forward. You hoped for it; you asked for it, even begged for it. Now you have got it. But what to do? Here are 5 steps to get you started:

• Learn about your organization’s performance. Do this by collecting relevant data about performance by your organization, by the competition, and by requirements of the new emerging economy. Interviews with key stakeholders, clients, and suppliers are an essential part of understanding where your organization’s performance level is and where it has to go.

• Do a SWOT analysis – be brutally honest about your firm’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Done correctly, it will provide very important information and lead to a good understanding of next steps.

• Conduct workgroup feedback sessions to gain valuable insights from the “experts.” Those who work in the processes know what will be required of them to make the changes happen. They will give extraordinarily valuable insights to next steps and how difficult the changes may be.

• Examine where your processes are today and where they will need to be likely changed, updated,  completely reworked, or simply tweaked. This examination will serve to demonstrate how complex a change will be required to perform in the new, now emerging economy.

• Conduct a survey of employees, customers, suppliers, and management to help verify all of the items you have discovered.

After you have grasped the extent of the needed changes, you are in a relatively good position to begin to plan the changes themselves, the timing of the changes and how to avoid negative impacts of the changes on the organization. You can begin to do sensible “makeover” plans and start the task of properly managing your processes for a leading role in the future of your organization.

The details of the work you do to get to this point and to move forward will provide you with the structure and plan to manage the changes that are necessary to successfully deal with the new, fast approaching economy.

Where does your organization stand? What are your most pressing challenges? Need help or have questions? Please contact us. We enjoy challenges!

Jack Weber is an Executive Consultant with Plus Delta Consulting, LLC

When the recession set in late last year, I said to myself, “Oh, we’ll be fine. We have several major client engagements under way, and our clients aren’t pulling the plug on us yet.” Then in January, we signed a contract for another significant organizational change management effort, so I asked myself, “What’s everyone else doing wrong? We’re fine!” That’s when our largest clients reduced our level of support and in some cases didn’t even renew our contracts demonstrating to me exactly what this recession was all about. And that’s when I realized just why this was being called the worst global economic crisis since the invention of the telephone almost 140 years ago.

So what does this mean as we quickly approach year-end? NOTHING! It just means I spent a lot of time (and still do) listening to CNBC business updates and that we learned to run our business more efficiently this year getting more done with less. Those can always be beneficial exercises though. What would hurt us would be continuing to believe that we are stuck in a recession and can’t do anything about it. Well guess what… THE RECESSION IS OVER!

After conducting some informal market research the past few months, we developed the following Top 10 List of reasons why the recession is really over:

10. In May, Forbes states that indicators point to a fast-approaching end to the recession (May ’09)

9. Newsweek announces the “Great Recession” is over after home sales rise for 3 straight months – a 1^st since 2004 (Aug ’09)

8. Leading economist Alan Beaulieu of Institute for Trend Research says that we are at the beginning of an economic up-cycle (Sept ’09)

7. Partner at a leading advertising agency reports that his client – a major discount retailer – hasn’t spent this much money on Advertising in years (Sept ’09)

6. Associated Press captures senior economist saying the recession is over even though there will be no tangible evidence of the recovery until the middle of next year (Sept ’09)

5. Washington Post reports that the economy actually grew by 3.5% this summer (Oct ’09)

4. Corporate attorney at one of the world’s largest law firms says, “We’ve never been busier.” And that’s not just the bankruptcy guys! (Oct ’09)

3. CEO of a national consulting firm also says he’s seeing signs that clients are buying consulting services again – and consulting is typically the 1^st to go and last to come back from a down economy… (Oct ’09)

2. CNBC reports that, while unemployment has risen over 10%, companies are hiring a greater number of temporary workers (Nov ’09)

And the #1 reason why the recession is really over…

1. Because I said so! Do you need a better reason than that?

If you believe in self-fulfilling prophecies like I do, you better pull your head out of the recession NOW or you will undoubtedly experience many more bleak and dreary days on the horizon… It’s time to realize that the recession will be over just as soon as you say it’s over, so do something decisive and step into the recovery. For specific suggestions on what to do, check out this article we wrote earlier in the year to help business leaders renew their organizations and produce better business results – Strategic Organization Renewal^sm: Producing Better Business Results TODAY While Renewing Your Organization for Tomorrow