Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to get their priorities straight. Few managers sweat the details when margins are fat and revenue is growing strongly. But that isn’t happening anymore. Today, with anorexic margins and anaemic revenues, it is impossible to ignore the need for getting back to basics.
This is particularly true for large global businesses. Markets in the US and Europe are stagnating, which has led many multinational companies MNCs to re-focus their efforts in Asia, while also paying attention to boring details that seemed less important in the bull market, such as mitigating the risks in their financial supply chain and winning small efficiency gains the nuts and bolts...