Hey CHEF!! You forgot one thing in your Recipe!!
As usual, the Lucky Restaurant opens at 10.00 am and closes at 10.00 pm every day. Maybe, you will ask one question why it is named “Lucky”? As far as I know that the owner of the restaurant wants to have lucky in everything he does…every time…every day…Or he hopes that he will always have a big profit in his business.
One day, he asked me to meet with him. He wanted to share something relating to his restaurant business. As his close friend, of course I fulfilled his invitation. When I was drinking a cup of black coffee, he was starting sharing his problems. There was a deep sorrow and something like frustration appearing on his face.
“Hey Bro, I just made a hard decision to lay off my expert Chef” he said. It was like hearing thunder in the daylight, I said” Why did you have a heart to fire your Best Chef? He has been working with you since you opened this restaurant and you fired him now? There was a silence in few minutes, then he said: Due to Economic Condition, my profit was decreased and my customers seldom to come to my restaurant with any kind of reasons, besides he demanded me to increase his salary amid the present difficult time. Once again I tried to make him happy facing situation like that.
Six months later, I visited his restaurant who knows…..I will have a good story from him. But something I thought before was wrong…..he told me that the condition was getting worse than before. After taking a long deep breath, he said,” Bro…..another problem happens since I laid off my best Chef and followed with my best Waiters 6 months ago. I have some difficulties in recruiting a fit talent to substitute them. Our operational cost is also increasing because I have to spend money to train them until they have skills as same as my last chef and waiters. I realized that I made the wrong decision in the past by laying off my employees……But The Die is Cast……
As the mentioned story we can make some conclusion as follows:
Today crises are everywhere. The development of various crises has become an integral part of modern business. The organizations must find appropriate ways and methods how to cope with this crisis. So, the crisis situations need to plan, to organize, to run and to survey continuously. Managers need to be prudent in their decisions during these situations. A prudent decision to give the organization can benefit by becoming competitive. An effective tool during this situation is knowledge management. During situations of crisis, it is necessary to apply the knowledge management. According to various authors, knowledge management related to a process that identifies critical information, selects, organizes, distributes and uses information in the required activities.
Planning during a crisis is a risky art unsafe to run the organization. The knowledge management role is essential in the organization, especially during periods of crisis. It makes possible to cope with the crisis and serves as a source of competitive advantage. Today's economy based on knowledge is dynamic competitive potentials generated by rapid changes in the external environment. Competitive advantages for companies today do not refer to positions in the market, but based on knowledge assets. Organizations can have many skilled employees but if these employees do not possess the required knowledge, then loses organizations struggle to be competitive. Thus, management leadership plays an important role to develop required knowledge. These insights are necessary to integrate with the organization's strategic priorities. Effective management of an organization during the crisis period will depend on the behavior of managers and knowledge that will apply or have applied.
Most organizations respond to an economic downturn by adopting one of two extreme focus on Operational Efficiency or on Intellectual Capital Utilization and Innovation. The majority of organizations in economic downturn try to downsize and to improve their productivity by cutting cost across at all levels and choosing to reduce their innovation capacity. They will not be better prepared during the recovery period and they will no able to keep up with the competition. On the other hand, organization that switch to the knowledge economy may eventually become The Winner. Developing an effective Knowledge Management Strategy is Key to Surviving an Economic Downturn and to prepare to the future. That’s thing Chef forgot in their recipe. (Chef is symbol of CEO, CFO,COO,CHO)…..JAH