Page 56 - Accelerating out of the Great Recession
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CHAPTER 2
THE NEW
REALITIES
The Great Recession and the upheaval it has caused are
truly without equal in the working lives of today’s executives
and managers. For years, and save only for a few minor blips,
executives and managers have enjoyed a long-lasting boom—
at least in most developed economies—characterized by
growth, increasing profitability, and decreasing government
intervention.
But that “old reality” has been fundamentally, perhaps irrev-
ocably altered, so even as managers deal with day-to-day busi-
ness challenges, they are looking to understand how the postre-
cession world will shape up. And that is not easy. When you are
in the midst of a crisis, it is hard to know which changes are sec-
ular and which are merely cyclical. As executives plan ahead
they need to ask: What assumptions should we be making, and
which scenarios should we be baking into our plans?
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