2009 - Oh what a year it was

For all and one, as an individual, 2009 was quite eventful in many ways, both on the personal and professional front.

2009 was “good, bad and ugly” and not just “good and bad” as has been the case in the past so many years.

One would tend to feel there is probably no better way to describe one's own experience than to use the phrase “good, bad and ugly”.

This is based on the name of the very famous western movie “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, et al.

For the world economy, it was a devastating year which challenged the fundamentals of doing business.

The world economy saw a massive contraction in growth rates cutting across all developed, developing and under-developed countries.

Most of the corporate organizations had to revise their revenue and profit margin targets for 2009 downwards as compared to 2008.

Employees cutting across all sectors of economy and cutting across all countries added lot many buzzwords to their workplace vocabulary

• job cut
• lay off
• retrenchment
• firing
• rightsizing
• downsizing
• furloughs
• mandatory unpaid leaves
• outplacement
• job offer withdrawal regret letter
• ‘asked to go’, etc.

This was probably also a time when the above buzzwords overran and overpowered the usual management buzzwords we hear so often while working in the corporate world like:

• TQM
• BPR
• Efficiency
• Effectiveness
• Productivity
• Quality
• Six Sigma
• Process Improvement
• ISO, etc.

Of course, revenue protection and cost reduction remained very much there and in fact grew in stature to become major themes for corporations battling for their survival.

All said and done, the experience of 2009 was a drive down the hell ho.e

And it aptly be summed thus, “2009 - Oh what a year it was!!!”