Helping you navigate the new normal
We are living in a New Normal world. Populists such as Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, Marine le Pen and Beppe Grillo are gaining support as economic growth slows and social/political unrest becomes common. My presentation at our annual conference last week in Vienna highlighted some of the key issues, as Jessie Waldheim of ICIS news […]
“A week is a long time in politics” was the insight of former UK premier Harold Wilson. It is tempting to think that the events of the past week – a terrorist massacre in France: an attempted army coup in Turkey: a fatal US sniper attack: the overnight emergence of a new government with new […]
The good news was that the Eurozone leaders did realise, at the last moment, that Sunday was a “moment of truth” for the currency union and for Europe. They spent 17 hours negotiating through the night as a result. But reports suggest it wasn’t an easy time: The BBC carried live reports of arguments between […]
The number “42″ was the answer to “the ultimate question of life” in the classic novel ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe’. Yet as the supercomputer providing this answer then explained, it was a pointless exercise as nobody understood the meaning of the original question. The world’s policymakers are in the same position, although they don’t yet realise this. They […]
There seems almost no need to publish a forecast for 2014. Policymakers have toured the TV studios to confirm that this is finally the year of recovery. They admit it may have taken nearly 5 years longer than first expected, and that there have been numerous ‘false dawns’ on the way. But now, they are certain that […]
Knowing that we don’t know something makes us uncertain and cautious. If, for example, we come to a dangerous corner in the road when driving, we see the sign and slow down. Its when we are driving on a bright winter morning and don’t look for the ice under the trees that we end up in […]
We are now into the seasonally weaker selling part of the year for US auto markets, as the chart shows. The big months for volume are always March – August, and then sales slow until December – when manufacturers offer ‘special deals’ to boost their annual numbers. On this basis, October seems to have been a […]
Something very important seems to be happening in China’s polyester’s markets. The blog was brought up on these markets in its early days with ICI, when it was part of the team that launched PTA into Asian markets for the first time in the mid-1980s. It has always seen them as a source of steady growth, with […]
“I use the term VUCA to describe the world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. It is very difficult for people to get a total picture.” Paul Polman, Unilever CEO The title for the 2013 Budget Outlook chooses itself. If the CEO of Unilever, one of the world’s great companies, can’t get a “total picture”, […]
Different times demand different skills. During the SuperCycle, one could assume growth was a constant. So forecasting meant a focus on better understanding developments down the value chain in the relevant product silos. Then managers could be set ‘stretch targets’ to ensure they met expectations for revenue and profit growth. But today, as the blog has […]
Our World Aromatics Conference in Berlin, now in its 11th year, provided valuable insight into changing market developments, thanks to our array of top-level speakers:
Ted Randall, Global Business Manager for Saudi Aramco, highlighted how their drive …
There are many ways to lead a company to disaster. But one of the most reliable is to follow conventional wisdom. The reason is that this is almost always backward-looking, and tells us little about likely future developments.
The blog instead aim…
The 25 year economic Supercycle between 1982-2007 led to a major change in companies’ budget processes. They could simply assume that growth would be more or less constant. And so they were able to focus on their own specific product silos, and bette…
Fundamentals eventually determine financial market directions. But sentiment, when supported by strong financial flows, can take them in opposite directions for considerable periods of time.
Thus the latest IeC Boom/Gloom Index continues to do its jo…
Pity the poor purchasing manager, who:
• Must keep inventories low as end-user demand remains slow, and the CFO remains very worried about the working capital risk
• Must keep inventories high, to minimise the risk of running short if supply probl…
The story of the 1989 US movie Field of Dreams summed up the happy days of the economic supercycle that was then getting underway. Starring A-list players such as Kevin Costner and Burt Lancaster, its theme that “if you build it, they will come” came …
Petchem markets provided a perfect case study of Volatility last week, confirming the blog’s view that we are heading into a VUCA world where Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity will dominate.
This was also real volatility, where prices …
Today the blog ends its review of the VUCA world with A for Ambiguity.
The global economy often seemed to be on auto-pilot during the 25 years of the economic Supercycle between 1982-2007. The chart above shows US GDP since 1929 (when records began),…
The blog’s series on the emerging ‘VUCA world’ today looks at how companies have to manage increased levels of Uncertainty. This can be seen in key areas of demand, such as housing.
The above chart shows how US housing starts (blue line) have fallen …
Unilever CEO Paul Polman suggests we are living in a VUCA world, as we discuss in chapter 11 of Boom, Gloom and the New Normal. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity make planning for the future more difficult than for a generation.
Th…