Don't dwell on those 30,000-foot forecasts for 2011. The range for GDP growth is 2% to 4%, and the price of oil will have the largest say. Enough said. But on the ground--region by region, company by company, career by career--the story is more dramatic. Recovery from the Great Recession is highly uneven; it's going well for some, badly for others.
There's nothing new in this. Even during the disastrous 1930s some industries and companies blossomed. Hollywood enjoyed a boom decade. Compare a movie made in 1930 with one made in 1939--huge improvements. In 1938 a startup called Hewlett-Packard sold eight audio oscillators to Walt Disney, who used them to make the futuristic Fantasia.
Another rotten decade was the 1970s. Stocks fell 48% in the 1973-74 crash. Unemployment hit 9% in 1975. Nixon resigned, Saigon fell. American confidence hit rock bottom. But those with an eye to the future had a good decade. IBM flourished. The minicomputer industry around Boston took root. Startups included FedEx (1971), Southwest Airlines (1971), Microsoft (1975), Apple (1976), Genentech (1976), SAS (1976) and Oracle (1977). Investor superstars Warren Buffett and Peter Lynch rocked the decade.
The 1990-91 recession killed the minicomputer industry and nearly wrecked IBM. Companies riding Moore's Law did better. Intel, Microsoft, Dell and Sun boomed. Cisco went public in the dark year of 1990.
Dot-coms were wiped out in the 2001 recession--or were they? Tell that to Amazon, Netflix and Google. Apple introduced the iPod in 2001 and began a ten-year triumphant march that would add $300 billion to its market value.
Now, once more, a great restruc-turing follows a great recession. Let's not spend time dissecting the losers. What are the Great Restructuring winners doing right?
Design. As the world gets more complex, good design is rewarded. It can be pretty, elegant, functional or simple. Good design applies to products, services, software and retail. Apple is king.
Cost. To be a leader you have to be a cost leader. But this doesn't mean penny-pinching. Google is no Scrooge, yet it's a cost leader where it counts. The guts of its operations are server farms around the world that use low-cost standard components.
Speed. No matter what you sell there are customers willing to pay top price if they can have the product or service now. Can you deliver?
Service. You must be a service leader. You can define "service" any way you want. Just deliver consistently. Southwest Airlines is a service leader, even though it makes the customer do everything. Go figure. Better yet, go copy. Lexus service centers look like a high-end shopping mall. I love them.
Logistics. There's an old military saying: "Armchair generals talk strategy. Real generals talk logistics." Pick a leader in any field and you'll find superb logistics and supply chains underneath. Sam Walton built Wal-Mart on superior logistics, using cutting-edge technology of the day: bar code scanners and mainframe computers. Amazon excels at logistics today.
Talent. Bill Gates once said that a great programmer is worth ten thousandtimes the price of a good programmer. Such extreme talent may or may not be relevant to your company. What matters to every company is talent evolution versus talent deterioration. Multiply 1.01 times a large number and watch it grow. Conversely, multiply 0.99 times a large number and watch it shrink. Now think of your employee base: Is it getting better or worse?
Internal communication. Way too many companies fail here. As a result they leak energy, miss opportunities and demoralize employees. The U.S. armed forces, especially the Navy--submarines and aircraft carriers in particular--are top-notch. Study them.
External communication. IBM's chief marketing officer, Jon Iwata, had a clever idea: He enlisted the power of IBM's alumni network--200,000 strong. He makes those who have opted-in feel part of the IBM family. Do you want your ex-employees saying good or bad things about you? Thought so.
Brand. Helmut Panke, the former chairman and CEO of BMW, summed up brand perfectly: "I want to be able to blindfold a person, set him down in a BMW and have him know it's a BMW by the feel of it." The best brands are not shallow. They touch a customer's every sense.
Purpose. There has never been a better time to be a company of integrity. You'll never achieve integrity unless everyone knows what you stand for--your purpose. This must be built on a moral foundation. God and the tweeters will strike down those who fake it.
For more on Rich Karlgaard follow him at: http://blogs.forbes.com/digitalrules
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