The Economic Stimulus Package Inside Every Company

Executives and business owners alike are struggling to keep their businesses healthy in the teeth of the downturn. Workers, shareholders, lenders and boards are all nervous, because reduced revenue can spell big trouble, and there are few good options for dealing with it. But here's one...

No business runs at anywhere near its full potential. It's why executives have incentive compensation plans. The untapped portion of that potential can be found, and harnessed, to counteract the downturn. Management first needs to recognize the powerful elements of their business's latent potential, then monetize them.

"Harnessing untapped potential can keep a business viable and turn the fear that's all around into hope and action. Tapping into it can act as an economic stimulus package for a business," says Drew Morris, CEO of Great Numbers! LLC, a NJ-based results improvement consulting firm.

The brief Chief Executive article you'll find here provides an example of the relative boost that tapping latent potential can provide. It shows that taking full advantage of just one element of IBM's unappreciated assets would have been enough to offset a 22% revenue drop.

The article then lays out 3 aspects of latent potential that can lift revenue within weeks, without cutting prices or costing much: winning customers' hearts and minds, strengthening the value proposition and communicating it more effectively. One example is what Heinz is now doing to keep customers buying.

In an effort to help executives and business owners find the powerful elements of their latent potential, Morris said that Great Numbers! is now offering full and 1/2 day Economic Stimulus Package Design sessions. "In those sessions, we work with management to find the powerful untapped elements of their business's potential. Then we help them pick the ones with strong immediate impact and create a plan to pull them off. The plan creates hope, lifts spirits and energizes people," he said.

Morris tells of a very bright senior executive who once told him that running a business boils down to "Sell more stuff or fire more people." Morris calls that really simple-minded, saying that it ignores the wealth of potential waiting to be found inside every company, and materialized on its top and bottom lines.

About Great Numbers!

Great Numbers! helps executives and business owners create, well, great numbers, by helping them find the most effective ways to accomplish it using the tools and management techniques we've pioneered. We do that by helping executives build their "results muscles," which lets them again create great numbers in future roles.