Rethinking the environment

I am writing this in the middle of the global financial crisis. The media already compare it to the 1930's recession in the United States. I don’t blame them. With 650,000 jobs lost over the last month in the US, it could well be.

At any rate, it is a good time to think about how to approach the changing environments for those of us who are independent consultants. Our living is based on servicing companies with an appetite for innovation. In the current environment, capital is tight and we should be mindful that there is a high bar for the rationalization of projects.

The only respite is that the crisis will force companies to change. Perhaps this is even more so in a volatile environment, as companies adapt to resize their capabilities to match the shrinking market size. Alongside that change is a demand for the update of IT systems. And there will be demands for optimizations of IT systems to do more with less. And there will be demand to automate transactions to alleviate load pressure resulting from reduced workforces.

There will be a temporary demand for support roles instead of innovation/project roles. Independent consultants who hunger for the leading edge projects need to assess their choice for roles as the nature of availability will change.