Frugality

It is a point of time when birthdays and anniversaries can be remembered by checking which major bank or financial institution collapsed on that day. The newspapers don’t seem to have enough of pay cuts and layoffs. To top it all, the communication from the corporate houses are sober, at best.

People who have seen it all have many a quote to share - "It's too good a crisis to waste", "Wherever there are adversities, there are tremendous opportunities" and so on. What does this all mean to each one of us? Is it just for the senior management and leadership teams to think what to make of this situation? I guess not - it starts with every individual.

I believe it starts with frugality. The best analogy is the survival of wildlife in African plains in the thick of summer, after months of lush green abundance in the rainy season. As summer moves in, food gets scarce, water scarcer. The wildlife has evolved to deal with it - animals slowly switch to frugal mode. They expend lesser energy, conserve water content in the body and they survive, and survive well.

Professionals in this harsh economic climate would need to evolve traits which helps them survive well. For us, being frugal doesn’t just entail reducing spending. It is not just about saving fuel, water, electricity or paper. It is also about avoiding the wastage of one of most important resources - time. A conscious effort to achieve more with lesser time goes a long way in making one deal with adversity. It means being in a state of constant hurriedness to deliver. Time, at this hour, is more than money.

I always think about the recession as the "Deluge", and it takes great amount of preparedness and differentiability from a professional to get on to the "Ark", not just to survive, but to survive and excel.