Beat average!

Yesterday I was attending a seminar focusing on growth companies and entrepreneurship. It was a great seminar with a lot of great examples of companies creating growth based on new compelling ideas and products.

An interesting presentation was given by Michala Marcussen from the London office of Societe Generale. She is a very skilled Macro Economist and she was asked to predict the future economic environment. And as she put it - if she was weather forecaster, she would predict shower and dark clouds - for the next 10 years! To support this she presented some interesting (and depressing) slides - you find an example below:

Translating the slide, it tells the story that most countries will not be back on the 2007 level in GDP per capita before 2016 and beyond. As you can see as well, Germany is the most stable economy.

Not a very promising forecast if you want to create growth!

My immediate reaction was to see this as an obstacle for growth. But my more positive mind-set took over and I realize that to create an accumulated number like those in the slide you add all the minus and plus. Right know this adds up to a minus (compared to 2007) and at least slow growth right now. As well as some companies (and nations) will be below average growth some will beat average. And that should be the ambition and the driver to improve and develop your organisation and the performance over time - no matter how the economic weather forecast is. Advance did so in the early 2000's and during the latest financial crisis - we were beating the average - not dramatic growth, but stable progress. And because we don't let the predictions interfere and depress us, I hope we will beat average again should Michala's predictions come true.