The Fin Review recently interviewed 34 CEO’s from Australia’s top companies on their views of the upcoming year and their priorities for 09. The article shone a bright light on the corporate lingo our clients will be speaking coming into the new year and if you were thinking it’s all about innovation, consumer focus, creativity, differentiation, being brave and taking risks. Think again.
The rhetoric centres on caution, risk management, cost cutting and improving productivity. Many CEO’s dwell on the time they are taking to identify and manage risks, risk reporting, reducing personnel costs, tightening costs across business, sound risk management, cost reduction programmes, managing expense bases, cost control, driving efficiencies, cutting waste, and so on and so on. Only 3 of the 34 interviewed alluded to their brand strength/value or having a customer focus as the central pillars of their business strategy coming into ‘09.
Gail Kelly, Westpac’s CEO was the only one to talk about the business focus being centred on the customer.
