Back when we were planning our Crunchtime event, I was walking home through the sludge and saw a flyer on the pavement that kinda leapt out at me. Huge font on the front read “Booms are for anyone ... Recessions are for winners”. The flyer was wet and soggy, but still couldn’t resist picking it up to read the reverse as this seemed to capture the spirit of what we were thinking of for Crunchtime. I wasn’t disappointed. This is what was on the back:
• More change management happens in recession than in booms
• More improvements are implemented in recessions than in booms
• More competitive edge is created in recessions than in booms
• More fortunes are made in recessions than in booms
This was bang-on. Exactly the tone we were looking for. This weekend, having now launched the programme for the event, I can’t help thinking of the last recession in the early 90’s, and just how true all those points mentioned above really are. I was working for GTA - a B2B travel wholesaler with its HQ in London - as Assistant to the Managing Director, with a focus on long term business development. My Boss – David Babai – had built the company up from a one room office shared with his three co-directors into a multi-million pound business with offices all over the world in ten or fifteen years, but this was a challenge. People weren’t booking holidays and some of our biggest international markets – the US, Japan, Middle East – were also the worst hit through the combination of world recession plus the effects of the first gulf war.
But David Babai was a total inspiration – I owe him a lot. He had started his life as a professional gambler, working cruise ships and casinos, and carried his gambling instincts through to his business life. So – during the recession – while the company did the sensible thing and restructured and downsized, (to use the polite euphemism), David also backed the smart bets, invested in the right places, continued to support an in-house team of software programmers, invested massively in IT, bought commercial property at the bottom of the slump for their offices in London, Osaka, Tokyo, Hong Kong, New York and installed private leased comms lines to progress development of online booking systems and electronic mail. This, of course, was back in the days when everyone else was still using faxes and telex and the web was still but a plaything for Sir Tim Berners Lee. (Yes, I AM that old!).
Four years ago, David sold GTA – and Octopus Travel, the online travel site which sprang out of that investment in tech – for US $1.1 billion. Not only had he weathered the storm, but GTA emerged from that last recession in far, far better shape than any of its competitors. Like any good card player, he knew what he was holding, he discarded what he didn’t need, saw the opportunities and – crucially – kept his nerve and trusted his instincts. I learnt a lot from him and, for all the doom and gloom headlines, I can’t help but think that we in the West Midlands are in a better place than most. The opportunities are there. The support is there. We just need to play our cards right and we can thrive, not survive.