Business confidence is at multi-year highs. Another indicator of that this morning comes from Sage Ireland, whose latest index tells us that businesses are more confident not only about their own prospects, but in the prospects for the overall economy. It is against that backdrop that the Irish Management Institute is holding its National Management conference in Dublin today.
Simon Boucher, CEO of the Irish Management Institute, says the national conference was restarted last year after a break of five years due to the economic downturn. He says the institute was "bowled over" by last year's response, while the conference this year is even bigger and better. Over 200 senior executives are attending the conference today, and they are there to take stock, to reflect and to take the opportunity to hear from a range of international business thinkers. Mr Boucher says the IMI likes to bring together a diverse blend of leaders from different fields to prompt managers in their thinking. The IMI CEO says the country is at a "very interesting turning point" with all of the economic indicators over the last few weeks showing very positive results.
Nilofer Merchant, who has been described as the Jane Bond of Innovation, says that most organisations are trying to figure out how to reinvent themselves and how to get "skinnier" in the process. Ms Merchant says that while cutting gives the options of change, in reality you are not changing anything, including your business model. She says that humans learn to fail very early, and that is how they learn, but we have not yet institutionalised that concept and haven't yet figured out how to make change a skill.
Tim Harford, a Financial Times columnist and author, says some very painful lessons have been learned by businesses over the last few years. Mr Harford says the trouble with the financial crisis - the collapse of the banks, the great recession - was that everything happened all at once and people did not seem to get the warning signals they needed. He says that one of the key lessons learned is not that banks can never fail - because they will fail again - but that we need better indicators of when they get into trouble and more subtle ways to intervene early to fix the problems. According to the author, there will always be failure in a modern economy as the old business models are wiped out and replaced by new ones. There will always be change, but we just need to make sure that change is constructive and is not too destructive and everything is not blown up at once, he adds.
