There is a very common simple solution to slow, stuttering, growth or turbulent market conditions and it is one that is automatically reached for by senior management….it’s reducing cost.

I’ve spoken to a lot of employees and managers from different client companies over the years and there is a story that crops up again and again about how they have all been through a major cost cutting exercise and the workload has doubled and life in general has gotten pretty miserable.

This was common during the financial crisis as companies struggled to get through and survive but it has now become the ‘rule’ rather than the exception and is being taken to new levels by eager knife wielding managers.

It is a great theoretical solution, courtesy of management theory and business school practise, reducing cost has a common sense ring to it. Why not do something that shows immediate results and make sure that your processes and systems are as efficient as you can make them. It all helps maximise profits and long-term business health, doesn’t it?

There is however a fatal flaw in this over-used solution that is so readily signed up too across numerous business boardrooms and that is that it is no replacement for the proper business of producing new, better products or selling more into new markets.

The cost cutting can only go so far, after that you are cutting away the flesh of the business and cutting deep into the ‘bone’. Your business will end up surviving on a precarious cliff-edge of potential failure and there will be no room to manoeuvre, no wriggle room when faced with the unexpected or disruptive challenges.

It is much harder for leadership teams to wean themselves off the cost reduction ‘drug’ and do the hard thinking around delivering genuine, sustainable, hard-core growth. In the long term it is the only way we’re going to build our economy and have a successful future out the EU.

An average corporate manager in any organisation is most likely to it as a waste of corporate time and effort to let other staff discover what ‘the management’ already know!

It is easier and logically a lot quicker to tell people what they need to know. The trouble is that on average people who discover something for themselves, are committed to it about five times as much as a ‘delivered idea’ or message!

Staff who ‘own’ answers will act on them and defend them far more actively that any delivered message. Be brutally honest with yourself and look carefully and objectively at your companies recent messages and ask how much are they simply ‘delivering stuff’ and how much are genuine offers of ‘self-discovery’ to a workforce.

If you ask a stupid question, you look stupid for about five minutes. If you don’t ask a stupid question you stay stupid for the rest of your life!

Mind-Reading Musicians (featuring the Ligeti Quartet) from Mr Chicken Films on Vimeo.