Carlton & Partners hosts roundtable management dinners to engage senior management in contemporary business issues as well as new thinking and ways of doing.

Carlton December Event

Topic: Beyond Cost Reduction

Places available 

Beyond Cost Reduction: Quick-Fix or Deep Cure?

In business, achieving a solid bottom-line has always been the Holy Grail. Today, the way that most companies seem to go about it is to keep their costs to minimum. Sound sense. Given sufficient income, low costs equates to a good bottom line. Unfortunately, simply doing cost reduction projects does not automatically equate to a good profit level.

Too often, when given a problem, businesses look only at symptoms. When faced with systemic problems – and insufficient profits is a systemic problem – management is traditionally faced with a choice. Go for a quick-fix or a real solution - symptom or cause? In the area of profits, high costs are a symptom and not the root cause. You can have lots of successful quick fixes – and still go out of business. Resolving the problem of insufficient profits does not require a band-aid, but in many cases it requires a tourniquet.

Of course, applying a tourniquet pre-supposes you have a clear picture of the deeper treatment you will need to put into action. There used to be an old med-school joke about the operation being a success but the patient died. A tourniquet has to be temporary or gangrene will set in. Its job is to stop the patient dying whilst you get your act together for the real dramatics.

Shifting the focus of executives and managers from quick-fix efforts to fundamental solutions will soon put into perspective periodic cost reduction programmes. It is superior decision-making that aligns managers and employees in the drive for profitability without resorting solely to cost cutting. Cost cutting in isolation can also negatively impact an organization’s competitiveness through the loss of vital assets.

Cutting inappropriate costs is a sound business practice – cutting costs as the way to achieve profitability is not.

Designed for:

• Senior managers who find themselves fighting the ‘profitability’ fire,

  quarter-on-quarter, year-on-year.

• Organizational leaders who wish to develop sustainable solutions to systemic problems.

• Managers whose responsibility areas are prone to excessive cost overruns.

• Organizations that have a low company climate and unacceptable employee turnover.

 What you can expect:

• A clearer understanding of what drives sustainable profitability over time.

• A set of tools to help create an environment in which a business or business unit can become sustainably profitable.

• A vehicle with which you can increase employee alignment around the key

  issues driving your business.