Good tidings we (aim to) bring

AS THAT familiar festive feeling comes around once again, many business marketing teams may be wrestling with a classic communications roast chestnut. Which positive message are they going to wish on their cherished clients over the holiday period?

“Happy Christmas” is on decidedly dodgy ground of course, but I was recently alerted to the fact that the seemingly innocuous “Season’s Greetings” is also best avoided.

Thames Translations, which offers its services to the likes of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Microsoft on such matters, urges more careful consideration, with managing director Simon George arguing that Season’s Greetings is “a western phrase”. “Many think that using this phrase as an alternative to more religious connotations is a safe option, but you could end up leaving the recipient bemused or at worst offended,” he points out.

Here at Managing Partner I think we will therefore opt to wish all our readers and advertisers pleasingly old-fashioned ‘good tidings’: some good news for all their businesses and loved ones in 2010 after a short break from a challenging year.

In the UK, in spite of predictions to the contrary, we stagger to the end of 2009 yoked to six consecutive quarters of economic contraction – the longest run since such records started in 1955. The Office for National Statistics may have found Q3 contraction was slightly more optimistic than first reported at 0.3 per cent, but economists are now forced to pin their hopes on the current Q4 for the start of what will certainly be a very vulnerable recovery proper. The UK is trailing France, Germany, Japan and the US in the upturn, unemployment is expected to keep rising in 2010, and people in most walks of working life will remain under considerable pressure for some time.

In this edition of Managing Partner we revisit some of what seem to have been the major themes dominating business debate this past year – tightening financial management; the balance of risk and remuneration (as highlighted by the recent Walker review on corporate governance); the effect of a weak economy on workplace conflict and stress; and the way in which carefully crafted performance-management programmes can still try to keep the focus on positives and potential in such times of trouble.

Moreover, at the same time as redundancies and profit falls have clearly hurt, many law firms have still seen opportunities for adding new expertise though the targeted lateral hiring of those committed partners and fee-earners looking for a new home.

Confederation of British Industry director general, Richard Lambert, certainly offered a hearty ‘glass half full’ perspective recently. The recession would be a “catalyst for a decade of business change” he suggested, with four key lessons that leaders could choose whether to embrace. Alternatives to bank funding would help reduce risk, greater transparency and corporate responsibility could build trust and morale, while rethinking relationships with partners and clients might go some way to reducing supply-chain instability in future.

Finally, he explained, an employee “flexiforce” of more mobile and adaptable workers could help firms to recruit and retain valuable, business-critical personnel, while simultaneously expanding the scope to scale operations up or down.

With half-year revenue drops of ten per cent or more, the leaders and managers I have spoken to in recent months are understandably cautious when predicting the future of their profession. However, they also seem increasingly open to just such change.

Good tidings indeed.

Richard Brent

Editor