Cost cutting or cutting corners?

From A14 come up with an out of the world problem diagnosis and solutions thereto. Most of the findings and solutions are the same details you find in management reports and meeting minutes, which however are not listened to in the normal course of business. This further supports the old adage saying that even a prophet has no honour in his hometown.

Most work done by consultants may be simply re-writing the internal documents, which people initially would have shunned for lack of in-depth root-cause analysis. More so, these consultants often come at an exorbitant cost to help drive a cost cutting initiative.Like Lucky’s “newy” blanket, most cost-cutting solutions are akin to simply rearranging the original problem in a different format without necessarily finding a lasting solution. It has been a common cause that most costs initiated, supported and implemented by those at the top of the corporate hierarchy, are seldom candidates for cost reduction initiatives. This is primarily the reason why most of these cost-cutting exercises end up as simply cutting corners.

The final issue I would like to highlight is once again linked to death and is about delaying the funeral. The way communities and religions handle funerals is different with some laying the departed to rest within the earliest possible time within 24 hours while others like we recently saw, take more than a week in the making.

Without condemning or praising one it is fact that after passing away, nothing more benefits the departed while the longer it takes to close, the more costs come to the living.

Cost containment efforts become less effective when decisions on the inevitable or unavoidable are delayed whether by design or by “wishful or hopeful” thinking. I once saw a statement somewhere that read, “hope is not a strategy”.

At the end of it all, when faced with cost pressures, it is good to identify the drivers, which may at times point at you, and then proceed to cut out or arrest the drivers in time.