E-Book Overview
In 2009, Ernst & Young helped businesses around the world to understand and respond to the extraordinary market conditions that we all faced. Our Opportunities in adversity program led to more than 45,000 meetings with companies to discuss their challenges and help them develop programs of action. The insights from these meetings enabled us to identify a new performance agenda — the performance wheel — comprising the eight key performance goals and related programs of activity that we have observed companies undertaking in response to the new market conditions. Since October 2009 we have been sharing these insights — or Lessons from change — with our clients.
E-Book Content
Lessons from change Findings from the market
Responding to the new environment Contents Executive summary
1
Driving toward the rebound
2
What drives performance?
4
Optimize operational flexibility
6
Optimize market reach
7
Re-evaluate the business model
8
Accelerate decision-making and execution
9
Strengthen management talent
10
Optimize capital availability and deployment
11
Revitalize risk management
12
Strengthen stakeholder confidence
13
Conclusion: Managing your future
14
About this report
16
C
In 2009, Ernst & Young helped businesses around the world to understand and respond to the extraordinary market conditions that we all faced. Our Opportunities in adversity program led to more than 45,000 meetings with companies to discuss their challenges and help them develop programs of action. The insights from these meetings enabled us to identify a new performance agenda — the performance wheel — comprising the eight key performance goals and related programs of activity that we have observed companies undertaking in response to the new market conditions. Since October 2009 we have been sharing these insights — or Lessons from change — with our clients. But we wanted to take this work a step further, so we commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to undertake an additional program of research. The research was conducted in November 2009 among 876 senior executives from companies around the world. It sought to test our model further, to see if we could substantiate and focus the linkage with performance that our internal research has suggested. Can we move from observed practice of what companies are doing to a more helpful guide to what they should be doing? Fig. 1. The performance wheel
Optimize operational flexibility
Strengthen stakeholder confidence
Revitalize risk management
Optimize market reach
The performance wheel
Optimize capital availability and deployment
Lessons from change Findings from the market
Re-evaluate the business model
Accelerate decision-making and execution Strengthen management talent
Executive summary What high-performing companies are doing differently
Findings from the market
Our survey revealed that the eight performance goals that comprise the Ernst & Young performance wheel (see figure 1) provide a robust framework for capturing and discussing companies’ objectives and priorities. More importantly, however, companies surveyed showed high levels of adoption of the individual action programs that underlie each “spoke” of the wheel, shown in detail in figures 8 to 15 discussed throughout this paper. These are an important confirmation of our earlier observations, given the timing of market events. Using EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) as our measure of performance, we have sought to identify the differences between the l