The Story of George The Baker

	Abandon what doesn't work
But the profitability of this new fresh-food delivery Model is not reached as the cost price is too high compared with the revenues generated.	The Baker doesn't know if this new model was a good idea. Should he carry on or keep going?
Enterprises are built by trial and error. It is normal to try experiences that don't work out. We learn through our mistakes and we can bounce back providing that we don't persist with something that could jeopardize all the Enterprise activities. But for some Enterprise Models, we have to generate volume before reaching profitability.	The Baker learns from his failure and decides to come back to a more conventional activity. Bolstered by this experience, he'll try out new Models soon...

If an Enterprise is in deficit but there is hope that it can turn things around, we can ask the financial sector to support the Enterprise during its convalescence phase.

But should we save enterprises who cannot become profitable again to save jobs?
But should a Group keep some loss-making activities because it is making profits elsewhere?

These are topical questions that give rise to controversy.

Yet the answer is obvious: financing loss-making activities reduces by as much the ability to invest in activities of the future and jeopardizes the enterprise.

Rather than financing what does not work, it would be better to dedicate the same resource to creating future activities, training the employees concerned in order to direct them towards new jobs.

We also have to prepare people to change activities several times in their professional life: if the lifespan of an enterprise has gone from 35 years to 10 years (see the forecast from Standard and Poor's), there will be few employees who will spend their working life in the same enterprise. Job security is not linked to belonging to a system whose lifespan is increasingly short, it comes with the required Competence to perform new jobs. We have to help those who do not have this Competence to gain it. Continuing professional development is one of the keys to success in facing these changes.

In summary, we have to prepare Actors to accept the idea

that the Enterprise has a limited lifespan,
that they will have to change jobs several times in their working life,
that continuing training is vital and
that Competence is their best asset.

The story of George the Baker is made available under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

Abandon what doesn't work

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