Love the headline, love the idea. The story quotes an analyst saying that when things pick up, technology will be one of the first areas to take off. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it isn’t going to happen very soon.

Technology forecast to pull world from recession – Infrastructure – CRN Australia.

Writing at the Forrester blog for information and knowledge management professionals, analyst Connie Moore thinks the now out-of-business Circuit City is not so much a victim of the credit crunch as bad management.

In 2007, the company was feeling financial stress and, like many corporations, decided to off-load 3,400 employees. But not just any employees. The company deliberately got rid of its highest paid workers and replaced them with lower paid employees. Those higher paid workers were invited to apply for their old jobs at the new, lower, wages.

No doubt the witless morons playing with Excel spreadsheets calculated this would result in greater savings. It probably did. They should have looked at the bigger picture.

Those higher paid workers were experienced sales people. As Moore writes, they interacted daily with customers. They knew how things worked. They knew how to make the business work. Their incoming replacements didn’t.

Moore argues, admitedly without any deep analysis, this was probably the root cause of the company’s downfall. I don’t have access to the facts and I’ve never previously heard of Circuit City. Yet her reasoning sounds plausible. Circuit City wouldn’t have been the first company to, metaphorically cut out its brain and then wonder why everything else failed to work properly.

While those sacked workers may have been at relatively low-level compared with the masters-of-the-universe strolling through the deep pile in the executive suite, they held the real knowledge about how the business worked on a day-to-day basis. Sacking knowledge workers, even if they are just humble shop clerks, means dumbing down the business. That’s not a viable long-term strategy.

The Forrester Blog For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals.

It’s not my question. I’ve stolen it from Gerard McLean Do you know how to do anything? McLean has a brilliant point. One that’s been touched on before in Knowledge Workers. When he asks do you know how to do anything? He says people with identifiable skills to fall back on will be better placed to survive the downturn.

I’ve already found this to be true. After a meander down the paths of management, I’ve gone back to my journalist roots and now earn a decent crust writing thousands of words each week. That’s because I know how to do something.

McLean isn’t perfect. I stumbled across his site because I’ve set up Google alerts for the term knowledge workers. He spoils his otherwise insightful post finishing with:

We don’t need more knowledge workers or consultants or bloggers. What we need are people who can actually do things like write code, design stuff, make pottery, edit video. And we need people who can do more than just one step in the process.

We need craftsmen. And lots of them who can also lead.

Well that’s just plain wrong. People who write code, design stuff and edit video are all knowledge workers by just about any accepted definition of the term. People who can do more than one step in the process are higher level knowledge workers. So are craftsmen. And craftswomen too.  Those who can do these things and lead other people exist even further up the knowledge worker food chain.

Do you know how to do anything? | GerardMcLean.com

American personal finance site Get Rich Slowly takes a look at ten of the best recession-proof jobs. It covers a range of industries including many knowledge-based areas such as information technology, entertainment and engineering.

While the main list has been drawn up for North American readers, there’s good and bad news for New Zealanders. The author thinks America will boost agricultural employment in order to move away from importing food. Maybe, but New Zealand produces high quality food cheaper than anyone else and the exchange rate is dropping. So our agricultural exports should continue to do well in the coming years.

One career that pops up in the Get Rich Slowly story is education. For a long time teaching was underpaid and undervalued. But there’s a shortage of teachers in most countries and plenty of young people to educate.

There’s a wealth of information in the story including a number of alternative views. I’d be interested to hear what others think about recession-proof careers.

“The four most dangerous words in investing are: It’s different this time.”

Sir John Templeton, quoted in The Asian Age.

Not only are there no new economic paradigms, the moment anyone mentions the word paradigm in connection wth your money, I suggest you run for the door.

Bill Bennett, quoted on his Knowlege Workers web site, 2008.

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From the department of every-cloud-has-a-silver-lining:

According to the Economist newspaper, business-oriented social networking websites like Linkedin and Xing are doing a roaring trade despite, or more accurately because of the world’s financial troubles. Apparently the professionals who use these sites have been busily updating their online profiles in recent weeks for when they lose their jobs.

So it looks like some people are heeding the advice handed out by management guru Tom Peters.

See Professional social networking | Facebook for suits | The Economist

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Among his list of nine ways of leading yourself through the current financial crises, management guru Tom Peters emphasises communications and increased physical exercise.

Exercise—encourage your leadership team to double up on their exercise.

The advice is the typical Peters mix of wisdom, common sense and mumbo jumbo: for example what on earth is “Over”communicate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! supposed to mean?

Like a lot of blog posts, there’s some real value in the comments include a pearl of a comment from Richard Lipscombe:

Specifically I urge you to take your lead from Google not Microsoft. Look at the ways Google does business and copy them as they are defining the future not repackaging the past. Look at Microsoft and learn about just how much they are struggling to keep their C20th business models relevant to a totally different world. Then compare and contrast Google to Microsoft to learn more about how you should think, behave, and lead in your life today and tomorrow…. I am not saying Google is perfect nor am I suggesting in anyway that Microsoft is bad – they are just symbols of a hundred year change in the ways we did thing yesterday and the way we need to do them tomorrow….

via tompeters!

Image via Wikipedia

Writing about management in the Financial Times‘ Business Education section Stefan Stern argues that recession or no recession there’s still a strong case in favour of improving the quality of people’s working lives.

So race-to-the-bottom employers are not really tough-minded libertarians at all: they actually limit people’s freedom. This is an ingenious argument, but one that may seem more than a little idealistic to today’s credit crunched executive. Some may even feel that “objects to be manipulated in the service of business objectives” is quite a good way of thinking about the staff.

via FT.com / Business education – A foolish race to the bottom.