Is there a way to survive crisis without firing people?

Henrik Mårtensson at Kallokain thinks so. He has a blog post up titled 19 Ways to Survive the Crisis Without Firing People where he does lot of acronym dropping, but at the same time managed to give at least to me some new things to look into.

Especially Donella Meadows list of places to intervene in System was interesting. Managed to skim trough it, but I think I'll have come back to this list after I have given some thought to it.

OODA as basis for business strategy

Long time and no posts. Shame on us.

I have been trying to write, but it seems that every succesful company could be used as an example of one or another management principle if you just spin it enough. I think that has raised my bar too high when looking for that true example of company utilizing maneuver conflict. Or I have just been too lazy.

Luckily there is atleast one company that has openly based their strategy on Boyd's principles. There is writeup about them on Chet Richards' blog by Jim Bowes, writer of Secrets of a Midnight Entrepreneur. OODA Loops in Contract Manufacturing tells interesting story on how they utilized low cost software solutions to support their strategy and not other way around.

Ofcourse, being the manufacturing guy that I am would've kept manufacturing inhouse, but outsourcing volume manufacturing to experienced partner rather and try to build up manufacturing capacity in addition to product development and spread resources too thin can be wise solution for startup.

Technorati revealed this blog to me. They have nice presentation on Lean principles and OODA in software startups. Ideas seemed sensible to me.