Are we facing a potential economic slowdown?

There has been a lot of talk lately about a potential economic slowdown on the horizon - globally, similar to the financial crisis we saw back in 2009. Although another recession is not confirmed, it has become clear to me that there are many organisations that have already started taking steps to retrench their activities and adopt a form of ‘wait-and-see’ strategy.

My concern is that while granted organisations are understandably taking appropriate measures in the face of the uncertainty in the market, albeit all this doom-talk of recession has the potential of turning into a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’. This will eventually act like a domino effect similar to the one we witnessed in the country in 2009. If you experienced first-hand what a financial crisis can do, just as I did, then I am very sure you do not have the appetite to go through another one.

It’s times like these that remind me of the talk I heard at a forum during the peak of the financial crisis in the UAE in a room filled with various senior executives. It was a candid talk by a leadership expert, and a dose of a brutal wake-up call that we all needed to hear. He shared with us his findings from a survey he had conducted, and concluded that corporate leaders in the West as well as in Asia, shared almost similar challenges confronted by leaders in the region with respect to the economic downturn. He pointed out one significant difference however, and that was the fact that many of the corporate leaders in the West “were doing something about it”, while majority of corporate leaders in the region, announced an unusual strategy which they proudly called a ‘wait-and-see’ strategy.

Most corporate leaders were not prepared, nor did they have a clue of what to do. What was even more worrying was that very little was done to empower the younger generation of talent to succeed the existing senior leadership. Still dazed by what I had heard in that forum, I visited a popular property exhibition later that week and watched the irony play out right in front of me. The same companies that had scaled down their activities and had announced a ‘wait-and-see’ approach were exhibiting their projects in what to me, seemed like a desperate cling to surviving a creature they knew little about.

Fast forward to this week where we are not only confronted by the prospects of another recession, but coincidently the same property exhibition in town, and I ask myself have we learnt the ultimate lesson of 2009’s economic downturn that we should not only build properties, but also build people? People who have the courage and creativity to lead us through these uncertain yet exciting times.

— The reader is an Emirati people and workforce development specialist based in Dubai