When Dame Angela Ahrendts was CEO of Burberry from 2006 to 2014, her tenure at the FTSE-100 fashion house coincided with the global financial crisis and the so-called great recession that ensued. Despite nearly two years of economic turmoil, the company’s valuation more than tripled while she was at the helm.
Ahrendts said later that she’d been “taught never to waste a good recession”. Her spin on Sir Winston Churchill’s wartime quip, “never let a good crisis go to waste”, goes against the conventional wisdom that economic downturns are universally bad for business. History has shown that they can present opportunities for growth. But how can companies best identify and exploit those opportunities?
As another recession looks increasingly likely in the UK, the first move for business leaders should be to run a thorough check on their firms’ fundamentals. That’s the view of Ben Parry-Jones, COO of CFPro, a consultancy advising businesses in a wide range of sectors.