Features of enterprise management in a crisis. Management of the financial recovery of the enterprise in the conditions of the economic crisis

Nesterov A.K. Development of enterprises in a crisis // Encyclopedia of the Nesterovs

The economic crisis is a very painful condition for the economy and business entities. First of all, the country's population and enterprises suffer from the crisis and its consequences. If the crisis affects the enterprise, then it loses the opportunity to develop steadily and produce products and services.

Concept of crisis

Crisis should be understood as a sharp violation of the existing balance, the destruction of economic relations or their poor condition and the critical situation of the majority of the country's population and industry.

A distinctive feature of a crisis is the lack of time to make decisions. Such a limitation is imposed by the negative state of the enterprise in a crisis and the need for an urgent solution to any problem that has arisen. Otherwise, the crisis will worsen.

It is clear that the management of an enterprise in a state of crisis can only end either in successfully overcoming the crisis, or in the collapse of the enterprise.

In microeconomics, the concept of "enterprise crisis" (or "crisis at the enterprise") is widely used. In the generally accepted sense, it refers to such processes that threaten the continued existence of the company in the market. These processes can be just small interference in the production cycle, and relationships with contractors, which can eventually lead to the liquidation of the enterprise.

At its core, a crisis is an unplanned and undesired process, which, although it cannot last forever, can slow down the activity of the company or even lead it to bankruptcy. The latter depends on what exactly suffered within the company from the crisis. In the event of serious harm to the main, core business of the enterprise, its further fate will most likely be predetermined.

But the crisis does not lead to the liquidation of the company immediately, as soon as it arises. It can develop quickly or slowly, but in any case, from the beginning of the crisis to its logical conclusion, i.e. overcoming or bankruptcy, some period of time passes. True, one should distinguish between the beginning of the crisis and the moment when it was discovered at the enterprise. After all, between these moments it may well be more than one day or even several weeks.

Therefore, the crisis is usually divided into several parts - stages that characterize a different degree of damage to the company, and at which it is necessary to take various measures to overcome it. In general terms, the crisis can be divided into four stages. Here is their brief description:

1. Potential Crisis:

If a crisis is detected at this stage, then this is the most favorable option for the enterprise, since this is not yet a real crisis, but only a prospective one in the future. In this case, the company gets a unique chance to prevent an immediate crisis by taking measures to prevent it. In order to determine the possibility of a crisis in advance, it is necessary, at least, to constantly maintain tight control of income and expenses and quickly reduce incidental costs that are no longer necessary to continue the production process.

2. Hidden Crisis:

At this stage, crisis processes within the firm already exist or will begin in the very near future. At the same time, they proceed slowly and cannot be determined by a standard set of management measures for their detection. To clarify the nature of the crisis, possible measures to overcome it and draw up a plan for the implementation of these measures, it is necessary to use special methods and expert assessments. In other words, enterprises need to apply special techniques for early recognition of crisis situations.

3. Acute surmountable crisis:

This stage is already characterized by a real feeling by the enterprise of the negative consequences of the crisis process and a catastrophic lack of time to take measures to eliminate them. Over time, the arsenal of possible measures is exhausted, as is the supply of time itself. At the same time, the requirements for the effectiveness of the measures taken are constantly increasing. At this stage, all the internal reserves of the enterprise are mobilized in an increasing spiral: first, the sectors least involved in production (workshops, departments, resources, etc.) are put into action, then the turn of the main forces of the company comes. In the end, all available reserves to overcome the crisis are exhausted. At this stage, there is still an opportunity to cope with the crisis, because. internal reserves should be enough to overcome the crisis. But due to the fact that all measures must be taken in a very limited period of time, the effect of the measures taken may be insufficient, and then the crisis will not be overcome and will enter its last stage.

4. Acute insurmountable crisis:

If the acute crisis could not be overcome, then its final part comes, which will end with the liquidation of the enterprise. At this stage, the requirements for overcoming the crisis significantly exceed the capabilities of the enterprise, and it is no longer possible to overcome the crisis. This situation arises due to the absence or insufficient number of measures taken, the lack of time for the measures taken to have an effect, or sharply increased negative crisis impacts.

Approximately in this way the crisis develops in most enterprises. But there are enough examples when there were more stages of the crisis due to various intermediate stages. For example, at many enterprises after the end of the third stage of the crisis, there was a temporary illusion of overcoming it, which could last several months, but then things deteriorated so sharply that the enterprise became bankrupt in a few days.

Will the 1998 crisis scenario repeat itself?

Russia has always differed from most countries in almost all respects.

For the last 16 years, the strategic orientation of the development of the Russian national economic system has been to improve the level and quality of life of every citizen, every family. Today, we can objectively speak about the fulfillment of the stated strategic goals: the growth in living standards is estimated at about 10-fold.

Another direction for the same period was to increase the competitiveness of production both in the domestic and world markets. This issue continues to be a priority, as there is still room for improvement.

If we compare the current situation with the crisis of 1998, we should note two aspects characteristic of the crisis of 1998 that are absent today.

1. Deficit budget and growth of state debt. The heavy reliance on investments in high-yield government debt, in other words, money speculation, also played a role.

2. Crisis of non-payments. The lack of cash in enterprises led to the emergence of large tax arrears, and this - to the failure of attempts to stabilize financial position undertaken by the government. But much greater value had capital flight abroad. After all, if money in large quantities is constantly leaving the country, then where does it come from enterprises. Therefore, the state must firmly counteract the outflow of capital, involve law enforcement agencies so that our economy can develop stably. Here it is important to decisively strengthen financial, currency, tax and customs control.

3. The use of barter in the settlement of obligations. This was caused by the contraction of the money market in 1993-1997. due to the diversion of money from production to the GKO-OFZ market. Naturally, the lack of liquid funds for payment was compensated by the use of less liquid ones. At the same time, the existing economic ties that arose back in the Soviet period made it possible for barter to exist for such a long period of time and ensured the sustainability of its use. Nowhere in the world has barter been used to such an extent as in Russia. In a barter transaction, the value of the exchanged goods is much higher than their real value. If the cost of a commodity is very high, then it is more profitable for the enterprise to purchase it through an exchange, while inflating the price of its product in such a way as to achieve the desired price ratio.

4. Structural crisis. During the entire reform period of the 1990s, Russia suffered a huge industrial decline. In 1993–1994 the decline was very strong and slowed down only in 1995, in 1996-1997. the decline in the level of production occurred at a rather slow pace, but in 1998 due to financial crisis the decline has intensified. But this has not been the same across industries. The main direction of the decline was the reduction in production high degree processing. At the same time, there has been a clear growth in low-end industry, mainly export-oriented extractive industries. At the same time, the difference between prices on the world market and domestic prices was very large, and more than one fortune was made on this.

5. Crisis in the agricultural sector. The agricultural sector, having gained independence, could not compete in the market due to outdated equipment. But the refusal of the state to finance Agriculture played an even greater role: if funding continued, at least for a while, then collective farms and state farms, having received the right to independently enter the market, could purchase new equipment and improve the quality of their products.

Among the reasons for the structural shift in the economy, in my opinion, the following can be distinguished:

1. Decrease in state defense orders by about 70%, in the absence of well-established conversion programs for various enterprises military-industrial complex, which caused about a quarter of the total decline in production. In fact, it can be represented as follows: the state said "produce products for public consumption, but we don't care how you can do it." Produce quality goods consumer consumption on equipment for the production of weapons is impossible.

2. Reduction of the investment program gave about 15% of the total decline in production. Capital investments in the economy in 1992–1993 decreased by 60%.

3. Due to the collapse of the USSR, there was a sharp reduction in the supply of products to the former socialist countries and former republics Soviet Union. This was partly due to the fact that these countries very much wanted to feel independent from the "big brother".

4. Due to some drop in the standard of living, the solvency of the population has decreased, and difficulties arose with the sale of finished products.

5. Economic and administrative reasons that arose due to the collapse of the command and administrative system: the rupture of economic ties, the incorrect behavior of enterprises and their management in new market conditions, lack of new perfect legislation, etc.

The macroeconomic crisis that broke out in Russia had a serious impact on the population and economic entities.

Comparing the previous crisis with current situation, it is obvious that Russia approached the current crisis much more prepared and stable: there is no large state debt, enterprises have funds, and barter is not used, there have been significant changes in terms of the structure of the economy (“In 2014, the share of non-primary exports (together with the export of services ) accounted for more than half of all exports - 51.5% .), agricultural enterprises showed impressive growth, food imports are not required. Accordingly, today's crisis is far from being comparable in scale to the 1998 crisis. Consequently, a repetition of the 1998 scenario does not appear to be objectively justified.

The specifics of the development of enterprises in a crisis.

The situation that has developed in the Russian economy is very complex and contradictory. But this is just a natural process that is characteristic of the capitalist economic system. Crises are repeated regularly - each time they are followed by economic recovery and economic growth. This is the law.

In general, the assessment of the retrospective shows that having turned off the beaten path of capitalist development in 1917, Russia again has to return to it. In a metaphorical sense, this road has already become quite overgrown and has turned into a small and narrow path, which will now have to be cleared again. It is not a fact that it will lead us to that predatory capitalism that has formed today in Western countries. It is also possible to change the vector of development, and change the target orientations, and the transition to another economic system. In general, the ancient Chinese wisdom is most welcome: "God forbid to live in an era of change."

By the middle of the second decade of the 21st century, a certain success was achieved in the development of the Russian economy. The most important thing is that the modernization of the national economic system is proceeding quite quickly. The Russian economic system has acquired two fundamental features that distinguish it favorably.

Firstly, a market infrastructure has been formed to a sufficient extent, state structures are effectively engaged in its regulation, and economic entities more effectively use the opportunities for the production of demanded goods, works and services. Secondly, the levers of state macroeconomic regulation were formed, which enable the state to regulate the activities of individual economic entities and industries.

It is also very important that now in our country all the main market economic institutions. It is impossible to name such an institution that would not exist in Russia. Although it is still too early to talk about their final development.

V.V. Putin, having come to power, immediately began decisive activity: he strengthened state power, put pressure on governors and oligarchs, carried out the modernization of vital sectors of the economy. All this cannot fail to have a positive effect. Russia has a real opportunity to overcome any crisis, external problems and start dynamic development.

The market mechanism is the most effective method of coordinating the activities of enterprises. It helps to "understand" complex economic relations, get reliable information about a wide variety of needs, goods and services. Without the coordination of supply and demand, the activity of the enterprise becomes much more complicated. The market makes you constantly answer for the decisions you make, for their necessity and quality. If market prices are formed under the influence of supply and demand, then producers receive the most complete information about what to produce and in what quantity. The market introduces elements of competition in the distribution of resources and in matters of investment policy both within one enterprise and within the whole country.

But the market also has negative sides. Since it is an unpredictable system, it cannot provide a solution to long-term social and other problems, it generates greed in entrepreneurs, the desire for constant enrichment, often to the detriment of consumers. Entrepreneurs often begin to manipulate prices in order to increase profits, rather than improve the quality of goods or reduce costs. Counterfeit goods, their quality, artificial scarcity, etc. - it is too character traits market. And an illiterate consumer may not distinguish a fake from a real product. In addition, improper coordination of market relations can lead to overproduction, frequent bankruptcies that arise for a number of reasons, such as unforeseen changes in consumer demand, a sharp change in the solvency of counterparties, etc. In fact, the market gives rise to uncontrollable processes within the economy, intensifying the negative consequences of large and small crises.

After the August 1998 crisis, Russia quickly overcame its consequences. In 1999, economic growth began and continued in subsequent years. By 2015, competitiveness has grown significantly Russian enterprises, their financial condition has improved, the demand for domestic products has increased significantly, which leads to a further increase in import substitution.

The current situation in Russia has important implications for economic policy.

Firstly, the economy of our country adequately responds to macroeconomic regulation, so it can be used to regulate many economic problems. In a market economy, macroeconomic imbalance is unacceptable, and the crisis has once again proved that we are part of the global economic system, i.e. inconsistencies at the macro level can turn into a new severe crisis.

Secondly, the main task of the state is to free the economy from the administrative fetters that fetter it. Today, the procedures associated with the opening of a new enterprise or the registration of an individual entrepreneur have been greatly simplified.

Thirdly, the state must develop socio-economic institutions using the levers of regulation.

Fourth, there is a requirement to maintain a balance between supporting domestic producers and attracting capital in general, including foreign capital. In other words, it is necessary to create the most favorable environment for domestic and foreign business. AT modern world capital has become very mobile, and countries have to "compete" for it.

The world economy is now in a situation where everyone is copying from everyone, from foreigners to their competitors. But this does not create a range of goods, but a huge faceless mass. Therefore, in order for the domestic consumer to buy more domestic products, enterprises need to create their own design and design ideas.

But, despite the good dynamics, many enterprises experience crises that greatly harm them and conceive them to bankruptcy. The crisis of an enterprise or a crisis in an enterprise is a very common phenomenon in a market economy. On the one hand, they weed out inefficient enterprises from the real sector, but on the other hand, they leave many people without jobs.

Business management in a crisis.

There are several points of view on how to manage an enterprise in a crisis. Some believe that anti-crisis measures should be taken only when the threat of bankruptcy becomes real, i.e. in the final stages of the crisis. At the same time, they exclude diagnosing it in the early stages, and pay all attention to the "treatment" of the crisis. In principle, such an approach has the right to exist. After all, very small businesses it is very easy to implement. Here it is only important not to miss the moment suitable for carrying out measures to save the enterprise. A simple example of such measures is the temporary curtailment of all the affairs of the enterprise, if we are talking about some external causes of the crisis that do not depend on the management.

But in most cases, this approach is considered unacceptable. So, for example, in his book, Professor Utkin E.A. wrote: “Such an approach is like “putting the cart before the horse.” The main thing in anti-crisis management is to ensure conditions when financial difficulties cannot be of a permanent stable nature. managerial mechanism to eliminate problems before they become irreversible".

But the introduction of permanent anti-crisis management at the enterprise is largely the result of poor "effective management". But there are a number of reasons that do not directly depend on the leadership. It is precisely on them that great attention should be paid and the development of a crisis should be prevented at the earliest stages, if it nevertheless touched the enterprise. If "crisis" is translated from Greek as "illness", then the most effective method for protecting the "health" of an enterprise will be the use of special techniques for predicting a crisis long before its immediate threat.

The basic principles of enterprise management in a crisis are as follows.

Early diagnosis of crisis phenomena in financial activities enterprises. Based on the fact that the crisis in the enterprise is a threat to its very existence, early diagnosis becomes a priority. The sooner a crisis or the possibility of its occurrence is detected, the sooner measures can be taken to prevent it.

Urgency of response to crisis phenomena. Each such phenomenon constantly grows like a cancerous tumor from the moment of its occurrence, affecting an increasing part of the enterprise, therefore, in the early stages of its development, the company will have greater opportunities to destroy it.

Adequate response to the degree of threat to the financial balance. Almost always, when neutralizing crisis processes, an enterprise invests its financial resources in this. At the same time, the amount of invested funds or costs should correspond to the level of threat. Otherwise, it will not be possible to neutralize the process if insufficient measures were taken, or the enterprise will suffer excessive losses if more funds were invested than necessary.

Full implementation of the internal capabilities of the enterprise to overcome the crisis. In other words, in the fight against the crisis, you need to rely only on your own strength, there are no other allies.

Factors affecting the crisis of the enterprise.

The crisis in the enterprise occurs due to the discrepancy between its parameters and various factors. environment. These factors can be divided into two large groups: external, i.e. not dependent on the activities of the enterprise, and internal, having a direct dependence on its activities.

External factors can be divided into the following categories:

1. socio-economic factors of the overall development of the country

Rising inflation;

Instability of the tax system;

Instability of regulatory legislation;

Decrease in the income level of the population;

Rising unemployment.

2. other external factors

Political instability;

Natural disasters;

Deterioration of the crime situation.

Internal factors of the crisis:

1. managerial:

High level of commercial risk;

Insufficient knowledge of market conditions;

Ineffective financial management

Poor management of production costs;

Lack of flexibility in management;

Poor quality system accounting and reporting.

2. production:

Insecurity of the unity of the enterprise as a property complex;

Obsolete and worn-out fixed assets;

Low labor productivity;

High energy consumption;

Congestion with objects of the social sphere.

3. market:

Low competitiveness of products;

Dependence on a limited circle of suppliers and buyers.

Of course, all of the above factors can cause a crisis in an enterprise, but management often has the main influence. It is the inefficiency of management that should be attributed to the reason for the inefficient operation of enterprises in market conditions. This is due to the fact that many enterprises do not have a development strategy and it is focused on short-term goals, as well as the low qualification of managers. The low responsibility of managers to the owners for the decisions made and for their results also plays a role. The manager of the enterprise must be educated in the financial field, have organizational skills and be subject to the operation of legal regulations that make him responsible for the activities of the enterprise.

The main directions of the enterprise in a crisis.

In a crisis, the company's policy should include the following main areas: financial analysis, production analysis, recruitment. After a comprehensive analysis, a plan for the further development of the enterprise is drawn up, which reveals the ways to solve all the identified problems.

The financial condition is characterized by several indicators reflecting the availability, placement and use financial resources enterprise. Since any transactions with material values ​​and labor resources are always accompanied by the expenditure of funds, then the analysis of the financial condition of the enterprise reveals all aspects of its activities and is the most important characteristic of its activities, also determining its competitiveness.

Financial analysis includes the following:

Structure of assets and liabilities;

Analysis of property status;

Express analysis of the financial condition;

Liquidity of assets;

Financial stability;

Analysis business activity, as well as the turnover of the company's funds;

Return on equity and sales;

The effect of financial leverage;

Production leverage effect.

The analysis under these sections compares economic and financial indicators for several quarters or years, i.e. their change over time is studied, the growth rates of indicators for the last period are calculated.

Apart from financial analysis the entire production cycle is also investigated. At the same time, when analyzing the production of products, it is also necessary to investigate the condition of the equipment, its manufacturer's technology, wear, quality of service, and potential improvement opportunities. Then it is necessary to analyze issues related only to the use of equipment. These are the types of raw materials used at the enterprise, and the state of warehouses, real estate, accounting and reporting, management organization, etc.

One of the most important issues today is personnel. It often happens that almost the entire staff does not have the necessary qualifications required at the present stage. This also includes work on studying counterparties, prices for raw materials and equipment, the possibility of their uninterrupted supply, deferrals on payments, and the willingness of suppliers to work in the future. Also an important issue is the study of issues on the supply of energy to the enterprise.

After such a detailed analysis of the enterprise's activities is carried out, it is necessary to draw up a plan or program to bring the enterprise out of the crisis. But in order to make it easier for yourself to work on this analysis during a crisis, such an analysis of the enterprise's activities must be carried out quarterly. In other words, constantly conduct a complete analysis of all activities of the entire enterprise. Then, in the event of a crisis, the director will have a detailed account of all the internal affairs of the company. In addition, in the conditions of lack of time during a crisis, it will not be necessary to waste it in vain.

The plan must necessarily include the factors that led to the crisis, it is they who will need to be neutralized in the first place. It also includes a set of measures to further bring the enterprise out of the crisis. It is here that the difference between management in the normal mode and management in a crisis begins. If under normal conditions the long-term goals are the development of the enterprise, and short-term profit maximization, then in crisis conditions, the long-term goal is to restore financial stabilization, and the short-term goal is to save money or maximize them. All measures for managing a company in a crisis should be aimed "at mobilizing the internal resources of the debtor enterprise, introducing the most severe intra-company control and accounting, especially for cash flows."

Cash flows are actually money and their equivalents, since now about two-thirds of all transactions are carried out by mutual transactions and barter. In principle, the presence of funds or their absence is the main indicator of the state of the enterprise. Money-equivalent means is the amount of covering the needs of the enterprise in cash for a certain period by any non-monetary types of other resources of the enterprise.

The first step towards stabilizing the financial situation in a crisis is the restoration of solvency, then financial stability. And the establishment of financial balance for a long period. At the same time, the elimination of insolvency is achieved by tough measures that are never applied under normal conditions. First of all, it is the sale of the company's assets. First the least important, and then directly related to the production cycle. This serves to meet the current financial need, i.e. the amount of debts required at a certain moment and interest on them. It is covered by cash and mutual and barter transactions acceptable to creditors.

Although the insolvency of an enterprise can be eliminated within a short period of time, the reasons that led to it may remain. Therefore, it is necessary to restore the financial stability of the enterprise. The first step along this path is the liquidation of unprofitable industries, except in those cases when this will lead to a halt of the entire enterprise. True, sometimes it is impossible to liquidate any production, since there are no funds for this, and selling it is a rather lengthy procedure. At a large enterprise, it is also possible to remove individual industries from its composition by creating subsidiaries. At the same time, financing of newly created enterprises is stopped, which stimulates the entrepreneurial activity of the latter and contributes to increasing the profitability of production and competitiveness.

Reducing the current financial need can also be an effective method. This can be achieved by restructuring the company's debts. You can also use the sale of debts to the enterprise for this. Since the long-term debt obligations of an enterprise in a crisis lose their value for it with the prospect of bankruptcy, they can be sold at a certain discount in order to get at least something on them.

Another step to restore financial stability is the reduction of staff. But this must be done carefully, since an excessive reduction in staff can lead to a sharp increase in the scope of duties for the remaining employees and this will cause dissatisfaction among them and a decrease in labor motivation, because their salary will remain the same. The reduction of any benefits will also lead to a drop in interest in the quality performance of their duties. At the same time, a decrease in wages, but with the condition of its regular payment, can significantly reduce such risks.

Under normal conditions, or if the possibility of a crisis in the future is identified, it is necessary to increase the interest of staff in the quality performance of their duties. D. Denisova's article "The Seller of Happiness" presents a kind of three-step pyramid of increasing the interest of employees in quality work. "Motivating employees means giving them the opportunity to realize their life values ​​by working for the good of the company" . The first step of the pyramid is directly money. A large salary is not always a sufficient incentive. Any employee quickly gets used to it and ceases to perceive it as a sufficient reward for their work. This is where the reward system comes in handy. But you can’t pay bonuses regularly, then they begin to be perceived as part of the salary. Premiums are best used as an alternative to penalties, i.e. rewarded good work rather than punished bad. For example, a bonus for consistently coming to work on time, for certain time work without errors, etc. The second step of the pyramid is non-material incentives for employees for Good work. As an example, the author of the article cites the company "Mirantis", which introduced a system called "Cafeteria". After the end of a certain period, according to a special report card, each employee is assigned a certain number of points for which he can choose something from the list of benefits offered: mobile phone payments, gym classes, insurance, etc. This program can be modified to eliminate certain shortcomings that arise in a separate enterprise, but the general essence will remain the same. The third step of the pyramid: increasing the employee's interest in quality work that does not depend on money. This may be the realization of some of his qualities that do not directly affect the performance of his duties, the creation of a favorable working atmosphere at the enterprise, the improvement of the skills of employees at the expense of the company will also significantly improve the quality of work.

The main task of managing an enterprise in a crisis is its rehabilitation. Therefore, ensuring financial balance in the long run is a very important task. Here, the main task is to fulfill the following tasks: increasing the competitive advantages of products, increasing the cash component in settlements, and increasing asset turnover. First of all, you need to pay attention to the marketing program. In other words, already in a crisis to figure out how to make products more attractive to consumers. Turning manufactured products into more salable goods, the company will provide itself with a higher income. As a result, the cash flow will increase. The last in this chain will naturally be an increase in the speed of trade. If there is demand, then there must be supply.

If all the measures to bring the enterprise out of the crisis have failed, then the crisis of the enterprise and its very existence comes to a logical conclusion: the enterprise is liquidated.

The definition of bankruptcy is enshrined in Art. 2. federal law 127-FZ "On Insolvency (Bankruptcy)": "the debtor's inability recognized by the arbitration court to fully satisfy the claims of creditors for monetary obligations, for the payment of severance benefits and (or) for remuneration of persons working or working on employment contract, and (or) fulfill the obligation to make mandatory payments. " In Article 65 Civil Code RF said that recognition legal entity bankruptcy court entails its liquidation.

findings

Almost 25 years ago, our country switched to a market economy with all its pluses and minuses. Over the past time, it became clear that we are going along the right way but this path is long and thorny.

The market cannot be an end in itself. Society needs not just a market, but a highly efficient socially oriented economy, receptive to innovations and scientific and technical innovations, capable of providing a high level and quality of life for all segments of the population. This is what is now the goal of all reforms in Russia.

Achieving this goal, on the one hand, significantly complicated the August 1998 crisis, and the global crisis of 2008 did not bypass it (it is believed that the current global crisis is just the consequences of the unresolved problems of 2008). But, on the other hand, after them, many enterprises were able to significantly improve their products and increase their competitiveness. There were companies successfully competing with foreign firms. They exist in troubled times. This forces many to prepare in advance for it in order to reduce possible losses.

The work of an enterprise in a crisis or in the presence of its threat is much more difficult than under normal conditions. It imposes great responsibility on the management of the enterprise, requires high qualification of all personnel.

The transition of the Russian economy from planned to market showed that the latter is preferable for the consumer. After all, all the products that were produced by domestic enterprises immediately after the collapse of the USSR did not find demand among consumers who preferred imported goods. After a few years, our manufacturers began to compete with foreign ones, moreover, they were able to pull the country out of a serious crisis. In fact, the crisis has become the impetus that our economy needed to start developing.

The history of economic crises clearly proves that the market itself will not solve all the problems facing the country. The crisis pushes enterprises to improve management and production.

This is the main feature market economy: it destroys everything sick inside itself, leaving only healthy, viable enterprises that can develop and produce what is really in demand. The life of an enterprise in a crisis is a struggle for this very life.

Literature

2. Handbook of the crisis manager. / ed. prof. Utkina E.A. - M.: EKMOS, 1999.

3. D. Denisova. "Seller of Happiness" // "Expert", No. 34, 2003. p. 39.

Introduction
This paper deals with the topic "Strategic management of an enterprise in crisis conditions".
The term "strategic management" was introduced into use at the turn of the 60-70s. in order to mark the difference between current management at the production level and management carried out at the highest level. The need to fix this difference was caused primarily by changes in business conditions. In modern conditions, we can only talk about an increase in the relevance of strategic management, and, accordingly, the relevance of the topic of this work.
The leading idea, reflecting the essence of the transition from operational to strategic management, was the idea of ​​the need to shift the focus of top management to the environment in order to respond appropriately and in a timely manner to the changes taking place in it.
The area of ​​strategic decisions is extensive: the choice of areas of activity, the priority of resources, the main long-term partners, the organizational form of partnership, ways to develop potential, opportunities to use the strengths of the enterprise, reduce the negative effects of weaknesses and threats to the external environment, competitive and innovative anti-crisis policy.
The purpose of this course work
- reveal the essence of strategic management and features of strategic crisis management;
- consider the situation of the crisis state of the enterprise and strategies for overcoming the crisis
- to analyze the strategy and tactics in the anti-crisis management of the enterprise.
Strategic enterprise management acquires an important role in crisis conditions. Under these conditions, the company will need to revise many aspects of its activities. Based on the foregoing, we can say that the topic of work is relevant for each enterprise. The relevance of the topic lies in the fact that it is important to carry out strategic management not only at enterprises that are at the initial stage of their development, but also at those that have been operating for a long time.
The role of the strategy for the latter is that if they follow the wrong strategy, this will lead to losses, if they work in accordance with the correct, effective strategy, this will bring the corresponding result. In addition, over time, it is necessary to make adjustments to the enterprise strategy depending on how the enterprise develops, what indicators it will reach, whether these indicators correspond to the expectations, goals, and mission of the company. For effective operation, an enterprise needs not only a strategy, but also a constant analysis of the existing strategy, an analysis of the degree of its compliance with the prevailing market conditions. Since without this, neither successful activity nor maintaining a stable competitive advantage is possible, which in today's market conditions is extremely important for any enterprise.
The development of market relations in Russia imposes new requirements on the quality level of management, the nature of the tasks to be solved, as well as the methods for their solution. . A new management concept is needed that adequately reflects the changes in the economy.

1. Essence of strategic management and features of strategic anti-crisis management
1.1. The essence of strategic management
The word "strategy" means "the art of deploying troops in battle." Over the past 20 years, this concept has become widely used by specialists, management theory and practice as a set of rules that guide an organization when making management decisions. At the same time, the strategy is also considered as a general comprehensive plan that ensures the implementation of the mission and achievement of the economic goals of the organization. The strategy defines the goals and the main ways to achieve them so that the organization receives a single direction of action. Thus, the strategy defines the boundaries of the organization's possible actions and management decisions.
An organization's strategy is a master plan of action that prioritizes strategic objectives, resources, and a sequence of steps to achieve strategic goals. the main task strategy is to move the organization from its present state to the future state desired by management.
The emergence and practical use of the methodology of strategic management are caused by objective reasons arising from the nature of changes, primarily in external environment organizations. The essence of strategic management lies in the fact that, on the one hand, there is a well-organized integrated strategic planning, on the other hand, the organization's management structure corresponds to "formal" strategic planning and is built in such a way as to ensure the development of a long-term strategy to achieve its goals and the creation of management mechanisms for implementation. this strategy through a system of plans.
AT strategic management and planning, an important place is given to the analysis of the prospects of the organization, whose task is to clarify those trends, dangers, opportunities, as well as individual emergencies that can change the prevailing trends. This analysis is complemented by an analysis of competitive positions.
Planning is of increasing interest to emerging firms that face difficulties in implementing fundamentally new strategies.
Let us first turn to the consideration of the organizational behavior of commercial and non-profit organizations. This is necessary because there is a close relationship between styles of organizational behavior and types of management.
Commercial and not commercial organizations demonstrate a wide variety of behavioral styles, but they are all derived from two typical opposite styles - incremental (incrementalistic) and entrepreneurial.
The incremental style of behavior of the organization, as the name itself shows, is characterized by setting goals "from what has been achieved", aimed at minimizing deviations from traditional behavior both within the organization and in its relationship with the environment. Organizations that adopt this style of behavior tend to avoid change by limiting it and minimizing it. In incremental behavior, action is taken when the need for change has become urgent. The search for alternative solutions is carried out sequentially and the first satisfactory solution is adopted. This behavior is practiced by most successful long-term commercial organizations and in fact all non-profit organizations in the field of education, health, religion, etc. Many incremental for-profit organizations simultaneously strive for efficiency and rational use of resources, while non-profit organizations tend to bureaucratize and maintain a certain status quo. The entrepreneurial style of behavior is characterized by the desire for change, to anticipate future dangers and new opportunities. A wide search for managerial decisions is carried out, when numerous alternatives are developed and the optimal one is selected from them. The entrepreneurial organization strives for a continuous chain of changes, because in them it sees its future efficiency and success. For-profit and non-profit organizations are much less likely to resort to an entrepreneurial style of behavior than to an incremental one. Non-profit organizations use the entrepreneurial style only in the early stages of their development, when they define the scope of their tasks, form an organizational structure, i.e. during the period when they form their social significance. At the next stage, they usually move on to incremental behavior. Entrepreneurial behavior is more often followed by private commercial organizations, the effectiveness of which is directly related to market trials. Private profit organizations are constantly engaged in an entrepreneurial search for opportunities to grow through change.
Organizations that adhere to different styles of behavior differ significantly in their characteristics. For example, a firm that adheres to an incremental style of behavior sees its goal in optimizing profitability, its organizational structure is relatively stable, its work is carried out in accordance with the course of the technological process of processing resources, economies of scale are considered the main factor in efficient operation, and its types are poorly linked between yourself
1.2. The Role of Strategy in Crisis Management
Anti-crisis management is aimed at preventing possible serious consequences in the activities of the enterprise, ensuring its stability. The main thing in anti-crisis management is an accelerated response to changes in the external environment based on consistent innovations in all levels of production activity. Important in anti-crisis management is the timely identification of the causes of the crisis and the appropriate adjustment of the strategy and tactics of enterprise management.
2. Development of an anti-crisis strategy
Anti-crisis strategies are strategies that optimize the behavior of corporations in the face of a recession in the industry, a steady decline in the main financial indicators of the corporation's activities and the threat of bankruptcy. They include a set of measures in the field of planning, personnel management, finance, relationships with support groups, as well as legal and other measures in order to protect the company from the threat of bankruptcy or a significant decline and create the conditions for a turn towards corporate recovery. The decline in production, financial and other important indicators that determine the effectiveness of the company in the market is natural, deterministic. Its causes can be investigated and appropriate adjustments made in the field of behavior that mitigate the consequences of the recession. The main attention in the development of anti-crisis strategies is paid to the problems of overcoming the crisis, which are directly related to the elimination of the causes that contribute to its occurrence. The external and internal business environment is analyzed, those components that are important for the organization are identified, information is collected and monitored for each component, and the causes of the crisis state are found out based on an assessment of the real situation of the enterprise. The anti-crisis management strategy covers all planned, organized and controlled changes in the field of the existing strategy, production processes, structure and culture of any socio-economic system, including private and state enterprises: full-time, comprehensive, timely diagnostics of the state of the enterprise and the external environment; - this is the first stage development of a strategy for anti-crisis management of the enterprise. Strategic anti-crisis planning; - the second stage in the development of an anti-crisis strategy, which includes adjusting the mission of determining the goals of the enterprise. Formulating strategic alternatives for the enterprise's exit from the economic crisis and choosing a strategy; - the third stage of anti-crisis strategic planning.
3. Enterprise management strategy in crisis conditions
3.1. Management strategy
There are two classic options for a behavior strategy for a manager - technocratic and adaptive. With a technocratic approach, an enterprise is considered as a kind of mechanical system, in which a crisis can be overcome by replacing individual elements, debugging the operation of the management mechanism. The adaptive approach considers the enterprise as an organic system, in which crises are natural in nature and are caused by a change in the stages of development. These approaches have their drawbacks, which do not always allow them to be applied in anti-crisis management. The implementation of the technocratic approach causes resistance from the staff. With an adaptive approach, the natural course of processes may not meet the established time frame for overcoming the crisis.
In both cases, the organizational and cultural approach is the most suitable for the conditions of anti-crisis management. With this approach, the enterprise is presented as a system, the core of which is the values ​​that dominate here, a set of norms for making and implementing managerial decisions, principles of organizational construction and behavior models. The crisis is caused by a change in the composition of values ​​that determine the way the organization lives and the direction of its modification.
Supervisor crisis enterprise faces two groups of conflicts in which he participates as one of the active parties; conflicts arising in the labor collective, which he is called upon to resolve as the first person. If interests collide in the conflict in the distribution of resources, there is an opposition of opinions and value orientations in solving the problems of enterprise development, then we can talk about a production conflict. With the predominance of personal and group interests, when production problems fade into the background, there is a social conflict. The nature of conflicts should be taken into account when developing a strategy for the behavior of an enterprise in a crisis.
The conflict situation at an enterprise that is in crisis conditions is set by a number of factors: the readiness of the team for changes, mutual perception of the anti-crisis manager and the team, and the peculiarities of the organizational culture of the crisis enterprise.
The most important factor is the readiness of the team for fundamental changes. On the one hand, it is determined by the motivation of employees, on the other hand, by the level of their professional training. There are four main types of conflict situations (Table 1).

Table 1
Typology of conflicts in terms of team readiness for change

In the first situation, workers want to work in a new environment, and they are well prepared for this. Value conflicts are most typical here. There is a heightened attitude to the professionalism of the anti-crisis manager. The manager must form an integral development program and value orientations acceptable to the team. He can be included in possible conflicts, including as an initiator.
In the second situation, the employees of the enterprise want changes, but are not sufficiently prepared for them. It is characterized by functional-role conflicts. One of the sources of conflict may be the insufficient qualities of the anti-crisis manager as a leader, another source is the difficulty in mastering new roles by both the manager and the team. The main task for the manager is to organize the professional development of employees. He must avoid conflicts with personnel and translate them into the direction of professional development of employees. The main means of overcoming conflicts is instructing subordinates.
In the third situation, workers do not want to work in the new conditions, although they are professionally trained well. This is where orientational conflicts come to the fore. A manager who finds himself in a similar situation should strive to increase the level of motivation of employees. To do this, with the help of conflicts, one can provoke a change in value orientations. It remains for the manager to either convince employees of the correctness of the strategic orientation he proposes and thereby establish contact with subordinates, or, if this fails, get rid of opposing employees. Here, a variant of conscious distancing from subordinates or integration is possible.
In the fourth situation, the employees of the enterprise do not want and cannot work in the new conditions. Therefore, communication conflicts come to the fore. The team, as a rule, tries to put all the blame on the manager. It is advisable to apply a set of measures to train employees and convince them of the correctness of the proposed path.
From the point of view of mutual perception of the labor collective and the anti-crisis manager, the situations in which the latter has to act differ. First, whether the leader is guided in his actions by integration with the team or seeks to separate from it. Secondly, he accepts the team of the new leader as his own or considers him as a stranger. Depending on this, the relationship between the leader and the team should be built.
The organizational culture of an enterprise is made up of a set of values ​​shared by employees and a system of norms and rules adopted by them. From this point of view, it is important to what extent employees are integrated into the existing system of values ​​and how ready they are for changes in this area. It is also important whether the enterprise lives by the same rules and principles or different groups live by different rules. The ratio of normative and value is given in Table. 2.

table 2
The ratio of value and normative in the organizational culture of the enterprise

Characteristics of the value system		Characteristics of the regulatory system
adaptability	Conservatism	The rules are the same for everyone	many rules for different groups
Strong, strong	political conflict	political conflict	Strong adaptive organizational culture
Moderate	Moderate	Organizational culture suitable for one strategy	strategic conflict
Weak	Weak	An enterprise on the verge of collapse	An enterprise exists as a set of autonomous groups
strong	Weak	Organizational conflict	Adaptive organizational culture
Weak	Strong	Strong organizational culture	Power vacuum conflict

3.2. Personnel policy

The essence of personnel policy is to work with personnel in accordance with the concept of enterprise development. The purpose of the personnel policy is to ensure the optimal balance of renewal and retention of personnel in accordance with the needs of the enterprise, current legislation, and the state of the labor market.
In the personnel policy of the enterprise, the following steps should be implemented:
– development of principles, definition of priorities and goals;
- planning the need for labor resources, the formation of the structure and staff, the creation of a reserve, movement;
– creation and maintenance of a system for the movement of personnel information;
- creation effective system motivation and stimulation of labor;
– implementation of the development program, career guidance and adaptation of employees, planning of individual promotion, team building, professional training and advanced training of personnel;
– analysis of the compliance of the personnel policy with the enterprise development strategy.
There are passive, reactive, preventive and active types of personnel policy. With a passive type, the management of the enterprise does not have a pronounced program of action for personnel; in a crisis, work is reduced, at best, to the elimination of negative consequences. Personnel service does not have a forecast and does not have personnel assessment tools. With regard to financial recovery, the personnel issue, in fact, is not considered. Reactive type involves the management of the enterprise control over the development of the situation. Personnel departments own the means of diagnosing personnel. For the purpose of financial recovery, personnel issues are singled out and considered separately. With a preventive type, management has reasonable forecasts for the development of the situation, but does not have the means to manage it. The personnel department has not only the means of diagnosing personnel, but also the forecasting of the personnel situation for the medium term. For financial recovery, there are short-term and medium-term forecasts for the need for personnel. With the active type, the management of the enterprise has a reasonable forecast for the development of the situation. The HR department has the means to diagnose personnel, predict the situation in the medium and long term. In terms of financial recovery, there are short-term, medium-term, long-term forecasts for the need for personnel, a personnel work program with options for its implementation. Personnel policy depends on external and internal factors. External factors include: features of legislative regulation of labor relations, the situation on the labor market, professional and public associations. Internal factors include: the goals of the enterprise, management style, working conditions, qualitative characteristics of the workforce.
3.3. Personnel management of a crisis enterprise to achieve its goals
Mobilization of the team of a crisis enterprise includes the following stages:
- campaigning, during which employees are shown the dependence of their personal destinies on the survival of the company, the image of a reliable leader is formed, channels of interaction between the manager, the team and employees are established;
- professional growth (conditions are created for employees to improve their skills, a high desire of employees for self-improvement is ensured, a new goal of the enterprise is formed and its relationship with development in the future is determined);
– integration (new models of behavior are created that reinforce new relationships, projects are selected in which promising ideas are implemented that allow uniting the efforts of all employees of a crisis enterprise).
In working with the personnel of a crisis enterprise, there are two approaches to improve competitiveness:
- elimination of existing shortcomings in the organization through reorganization associated with the elimination of departments and employees that do not fit into the strategy for bringing the enterprise out of a crisis situation;
- search for unique features of the enterprise that create a positive image among consumers.
The reorganization associated with the reduction of staff can be effective and inefficient.
Inefficient reorganization can lead to the following negative results (Table 5).

Table 5
Consequences of an inefficient personnel policy at a crisis enterprise

Events	Result
Implementation of voluntary separation programs for staff, including old-age retirement	The risk of losing qualified personnel, which may cause significant difficulties for the enterprise
Reduction or temporary release from work of a certain proportion of workers in all structural divisions	uneven distribution work force in the structural divisions of the enterprise
Reduction of programs for financing training and advanced training of employees of the enterprise	Unpreparedness of employees to work in new jobs in conditions of limited resources
Excessive and significant staff cuts	Violation of the rhythmic technological process, the need to return the dismissed to their jobs or hire other workers, which can create conflict situations
Placement of laid-off remaining workers	Short-term success as long as the remaining workers have an incentive to work
The introduction of strict labor regulations and strict accountability instead of the wide involvement of personnel in the development and implementation of measures to bring the enterprise out of the crisis	Alienation of the team from the leader and, as a result, a decrease in incentives for highly productive work
Gradual sending of employees on unpaid leave	Deterioration in the team of the moral and psychological climate and attitude to work
Implementation of an incentive system that does not take into account the prospects for career growth of employees in the enterprise	Negative attitude towards the enterprise of certain groups of employees, the generation of the desire for momentary success

The following measures, as a rule, lead to a positive effect during the reorganization of a crisis enterprise.
- reduction of levels in the management structure while maintaining jobs while strengthening the reserve for the top management of the enterprise;
- reduction of the management structure, taking into account the interdependence of its elements and the development of measures to stabilize the new structure;
– periodic reassessment of personnel policy in order to best suit the current situation;
- identifying, maintaining and training employees who have shown leadership qualities and a penchant for managerial activities;
– implementation of educational programs, support for the professional growth of employees, especially in priority areas for the enterprise;
- advance preparation of promising candidates for key positions, taking into account their ability to perform their functions in a crisis;
- decentralization of the management structure with the delegation of the necessary powers to key figures in the management apparatus at the strategic and operational levels;
– creation of teams of like-minded people at the management level and structural divisions;
– tracking and maintaining human resources.
Increasing the level of competitiveness of an enterprise largely depends on its intellectual potential. The abilities that make up the core of human resources have the following properties:
– importance for short-term survival in the short and long term;
– unavailability for competitors due to the difficulty of borrowing them;
- a combination of knowledge and skills of personnel, and not their embodiment in products and functional duties;
- connection in a concentrated form of scientific, technical, production, organizational, managerial and personnel potentials;
- belonging to the organizational system of the enterprise as a whole, and not to individual employees;
– a long-term basis for making strategic decisions;
- are supported and perceived by the enterprise during a certain time period;
- provide a dominant position in the market.
In relationships with the team, it is often necessary to overcome resistance from the staff. The main method here is forced, which involves the use of force to overcome resistance. The coercive method is socially undesirable, but in the face of time pressure it provides advantages. However, when the cause of workers' resistance is clear, no overt display of force is needed. When using the force method, the following difficulties are encountered:
- the absence, as a rule, before the start of changes of a basis that would ensure the implementation of the power method, and as a result, a high risk of failure;
- the difficulty of predicting the force of personnel resistance and eliminating the causes that give rise to it;
- the prematureness of the call for changes ultimately slows down the time for the enterprise to emerge from the crisis;
- ignoring forceful instructions for the implementation of changes;
etc.................

If an organization, using problem management procedures, could not prevent an undesirable development of events at the pre-crisis stage and the problem escalated into a crisis, it must resort to new procedures related to measures in the context of an outbreak of a crisis. For her, the times of the greatest test of all her resources and capabilities are coming. The attitude towards it in the future will depend on how the organization behaves in a crisis. Unprofessional actions will not only affect the reputation of the organization, but also bring it significant material losses or complete ruin. Therefore, in a crisis, it is very important to act wisely and at the same time to cooperate openly and honestly with the media, our employees and the public at large.

Experts point out a number of signs that an organization in a crisis should take into account.

1. Suddenness. A crisis that breaks out, whatever its origin, as a rule, is always unexpected. Oftentimes, peers find themselves in trouble when they are approached by members of the media demanding clarification on what immediate action the organization will take.

2. Lack of information. Many unexpected events are unfolding at the same time. Rumors spread. From all sides, the organization is being asked for clarification. It is difficult to comprehend everything that is happening at once.

3. Escalation of events. The crisis is growing. Everyone wants to know what's really going on. Will the organization make an official statement? Are the rumors being spread true? At a time when rumors are rampant, it's hard to get the right information. The organization strives to respond to everything carefully, but events are unfolding too quickly.

4. Loss of control. The usual increase in escalation of events is unpleasant because too much is happening at the same time. Wrong information enters the news channels, hitting the newspaper pages and filling the airwaves. The spread of rumors is too difficult to control.

5. Increasing interference of external forces. The media, public organizations, the general population feed on rumors. "Interested" politicians, commentators of all ranks express their point of view regarding the events. The media are waiting for a reaction from the organization. The public is demanding an answer. Customers want to know what's going on.

6. The mentality of the cornered. Understandably, the organization feels like it is under siege. Lawyers suggest: "Whatever we say can be used against us." The best thing to do is to remain silent. However, does this behavior make sense?

7. Panic, When “walls are crumbling” and “roofs are leaking” in many places, there is a feeling of panic. Under such circumstances, it is very important to convince management to take decisive action and report what is happening. (See: Seitel Fraser P. Communication in Crisis // United States Banker. -1990. - December. - P. 49).

Common Mistakes, which organizations usually do in a crisis, according to American PR specialists, are:

1. fluctuations, giving the public the impression of indecision, indifference, incompetence or lack of training.

2. clouded, leading to thoughts of insincerity and insensitivity.

3. Revenge, increasing tension and pumping up emotions instead of reassuring the public.

4. Lies or evasion causing even greater problems, because nothing can replace the truth.

5. rhetoric, striking irritation with their unreasonable arrogance.

6. Confrontation, giving a reason for others to inflate the problem and escalate the situation.

7. litigation, which inevitably makes the crisis even more obvious and is capable of leading to a less reasonable denouement. (Cm.: Cutlip S. and others. Effective Public Relations - P. 367).

Generally speaking, during the first most critical hours after the onset of the crisis, two questions are of primary importance: what to do and what to say. The meaning of the activity should be not a simple response to the development of the crisis, but the development of a strategy to contain and anticipate it. To avoid further deepening of the PR crisis, the organization should assess the situation as soon as possible, identify the most vulnerable places in it, paying special attention to the possible threat to human life and the danger of environmental pollution. Moreover, in the field of view should be not just the problem of monitoring the most vulnerable places, but assessing them in terms of visibility and possibility of attack.

attract excessive, emotionally colored attention. If there are several such places, they should be ranked depending on the degree of significance. It is very important to foresee scenarios for the likely development of crisis events and to prepare draft messages and statements in advance.

The organization must then take practical action to contain and overcome the crisis. Public relations experts recommend taking the following practical steps:

1. Take a clear, unambiguous position In times of crisis, the organization should not look too straightforward. It should be flexible enough to respond to changes in developments, but at the same time stick to its principled position and defend it.

2. Get senior management involved. The management must not only be involved in resolving crisis situations (in practice this always happens), but also clearly prove to others their participation in overcoming the crisis. The leader should not only sit in the office and give orders at a distance, he needs to be in critical places, public.

3. Step up third party support. The organization must enlist the support of its position from well-known analysts, leading news channels, reputable independent scientists or experts, and legal authorities. Anyone who is respected and endowed with great powers can help the cause.

4. Organize presence at the scene. Leaders must appear where the situation is most critical. When in 1984 there was an explosion on chemical plant Union Carbide Company in Bhopal, which claimed the lives of thousands of people, the head of this company immediately flew from the United States to India to the scene. His presence there showed that the company was deeply saddened by the tragedy. On the other hand, when oil spilled from an Exxon tanker in the Alaska region, the latter lost its PR-

battle after its leader declared that he had more important things to do than fly to Alaska.

5. Centralize communications. In any crisis, there is an urgent need to appoint a person responsible for disseminating information and form a team to ensure his work. This person is the key person authorized to make statements on behalf of the organization.

6. Establish cooperation with the media. During the crisis, journalists behave provocatively, become stubborn. They are willing to go down to any level just to get information. But this should not be transferred to specific media workers. You need to perceive the media as your friends-opponents and explain to them your point of view regarding the crisis By turning them into enemies, the organization will only lose.

7. Don't ignore your employees. Keeping employees up to date can ensure, as much as possible in times of crisis, the normal functioning of the organization. Employees are her closest allies, so in no case should they be kept in the dark.

8. Look at the crisis broadly. The management of the organization often shows low activity at the beginning of the crisis and overreacts to its strengthening. Excessive exaggeration of individual situations must be avoided. This behavior can be very costly.

9. To think in advance about positioning the organization after overcoming the crisis. The focus should be on reporting the steps the organization will take to deal with the crisis. It should take the blame if necessary. But then you need to quickly focus on what is being done now, and not on the mistakes made.

10. To carry out continuous monitoring and evaluation of the course of the crisis. The study of public opinion in crisis situations should be comprehensive. You need to keep abreast of the opinions of your employees, consumers, suppliers, investors, and, if necessary, the wider

which public, to check whether information messages work, what works better and what works worse, and make appropriate adjustments.

21May

Hello! In this article, we will talk about crisis management.

Today you will learn:

1. What is meant by this concept;
2. What tasks and methods of anti-crisis management exist;
3. Which companies provide crisis management services.

In the activities of any enterprise or private company a situation may occur when the results of the year are summed up, reports are submitted, but the results are not encouraging, but quite the opposite. There are delays on loans, suppliers no longer give installments to pay for goods. In fact, there is a crisis situation.

Even if there are no such problems in your company now, there will definitely not be extra information, so today we will discuss how to prevent crisis phenomena.

What is crisis management

To begin with, let's define what is generally understood by this term.

Crisis management is a set of procedures that are carried out in order to improve the company's activities and allow it to get out of a state of crisis.

Tasks of anti-crisis management

In terms of prevention:

• Conduct an analysis of the organization's activities;
• Timely identify the beginning of a negative process;
• Evaluate how efficiently the company's divisions work;
• Develop measures to help prevent crises.

If the presence of crisis phenomena has already been identified, the tasks are as follows:

• Recognize crisis phenomena;
• Carry out preventive measures to prevent crisis situations;
• Overcome the consequences of the crisis;
• Soften the crisis process;
• Stabilize the state of the company;
• Optimize costs;
• Resolve internal conflicts in the organization;
• Gradually increase profits.

Crisis Factors

These factors can be conditionally divided into 2 groups: those that depend on the activities of the company and those that do not depend on its activities (that is, external).

The following situations lead to the fact that a crisis occurs in an enterprise or in a company:

• Incorrectly organized budget and credit policy;
• Mistakes that were made in developing a financial strategy;
• non-professional level;
• High level of wear of production equipment;
• Unprofessionalism of management personnel.

This list shows the main factors, the presence of which can provoke a crisis in any enterprise.

Speaking of global external factors, then you can call:

• Strengthening inflation growth;
• Increase in the number of unemployed;
• Unstable exchange rates;
• Instability of the political and economic situation in the state as a whole.

What are the methods of anti-crisis management

Management of any type implies that a whole range of different methods will be applied. In crisis management, everything happens the same way.

We propose to consider some of the most common methods:

1. We determine the strategy in accordance with which the company will develop.

The activities of a crisis enterprise or company must first be analyzed in order to develop the correct anti-crisis strategy.

In the development process, it is important to take into account all the factors that we talked about a little earlier. Only if this approach is used, the strategy will be developed correctly and its operation will become effective.

Building a strategy consists of several steps:

• Diagnostics of the company is carried out, and comprehensive;
• After receiving the results of the diagnostics, the goals facing the company are adjusted;
• Only after that a strategy is chosen that will lead the company out of the crisis.

2. Reducing the level of costs.

It is no secret that a company that is in a state of crisis is experiencing financial difficulties. In such a situation, applying such a method is absolutely the right step.

Costs are reduced in several ways: they reduce to zero expenses that are not related to the company's core activities, optimize employee costs, and so on.

3. Making changes to the structure of the company.

The most common is reorganization. Thanks to this technique, the position of the company is stabilized.

4. Formation of reporting.

Reporting should be prepared in such a way that it reflects the real state of affairs in the organization. Otherwise, it simply doesn't make sense.

Therefore, the report is based on cash flow analytics, as well as an analysis of how problematic the company is in general.

5. Increasing cash flow.

This is a chance to carry out anti-crisis measures in full. To do this, you need to decide how cash flow can be increased.

When a company is brought out of a crisis, all these methods are usually used in combination.

Bringing the company out of the crisis: stages

To prevent the crisis from developing and aggravating, you need to know what to do to get the company out of a difficult situation.

Step 1. Determine the epicenter of the crisis.

You should start by determining which part of the company became the starting point of the problem. Perhaps the quality of products has deteriorated, it has grown a lot, there are unreasonably high, and so on.

When we determine exactly how it all began, it will be possible to develop an effective methodology for getting the company out of a difficult situation.

Step 2. We carry out work with employees.

This is a very important part of taking the company out of the crisis.

In this situation, the following actions should be taken:

• The structure and number of personnel are being optimized: they stop cooperating with part-time workers, refuse the services of workers who perform an insignificant amount of work;
• The team needs to be made aware of how things are in reality in the company. The silence of the leadership leads to rumors and only exacerbates the situation;
• All conflict situations must be eliminated in the team;
• Worth in connection with the new requirements.

Step 3. We reduce the level of costs.

This step should be done within reason. There is no need to cut costs to the detriment of the quality of the products that your company produces.

Most often, costs are reduced by:

• Purchasing raw materials at a lower cost;
• Concluding contracts with suppliers in your region;
• Size reduction ;
• Reducing business expenses.

Analyze all costs in the most thorough way, there will definitely be something that can be reduced to a minimum.

Step 4. We stimulate sales.

There are many options here. Choose from those that are suitable for the field of activity of your company.

If you have commercial enterprise- hold a sale, if you produce something, then offer favorable conditions to your potential customers, issue discount cards, and so on.

Step 5. We optimize financial flows.

To do this, you can carry out a whole range of activities:

• Form registers for all payments;
• Set discounts for customers who purchase goods for cash;
• Reduce the terms of commodity loans;
• Check the availability of funds every day;
• Increase your income by selling equipment you don't use.

Step 6. We restructure debts to creditors.

This is a very important stage of anti-crisis measures. You can restructure your debt by applying installment payments, agree on a full write-off of debts, exchange debt obligations for securities.

Anti-crisis personnel management

Personnel management in a crisis stands out as a separate activity. Indeed, such events can be called a whole science.

The most important goal of these measures is to keep the enterprise viable and at the same time not to lose qualified personnel.

Measures for anti-crisis personnel management solve the following problems:

• Form a group of specialists who are able to adapt the company to new conditions;
• They retain the most valuable personnel: people who have made the maximum contribution to the development of the company;
• They don’t just cut staff, but bring the staff into a rational structure;
• Reduce or completely eliminate tension in the team and distrust of leaders.

The most important point, which is a guarantee of effective personnel management, is the right choice personnel policy.

Anti-crisis personnel policy is divided into several main types:

• active type. Management has complete information and can predict developments;
• passive type. Staff and managers do not act according to a clear plan, but simply try to eliminate the consequences of the crisis;
• preventive type. It is characterized by the fact that the management has no methods of influencing the situation;
• Jet type. Management is engaged in general observation, controls only individual symptoms of the crisis.

Methods of working with personnel in anti-crisis management

Let's look at the most common methods now.

1. Forced organizational changes.

Expensive and unwanted event. Its use is justified only when you have an acute shortage of time. Its essence is the global reduction of jobs.

2. Adaptive changes.

Conflicts in the team are resolved using compromises, deals, and so on. This technique is used when the advocates of change are not leaders, but want to introduce something new.

3. Crisis technique.

If the leader understands that the crisis cannot be avoided, he takes the following steps:

• Convinces employees that the crisis cannot be avoided;
• Positions itself as a rescuer in case of a crisis.

4. Resistance management.

In a crisis, the resistance of the staff changes to the support of the management. Your task in this situation is not to fight people, but not to allow panic.

In order to identify frames that have great resistance to implementation anti-crisis program, and therefore, can create tension in the team, use the following techniques:

• Offer them other positions in other structural divisions;
• Spend;
• Offer;
• Offer.

The result is the following: employees must see that the management keeps the situation under control and will not allow negative consequences.

There are several ways to do this:

• Let each employee know that you are in control of the situation;
• Pick a team to work in a crisis: each person should be busy and understand that he is taking part in correcting the situation;
• Do not panic, do not react violently: employees will do the same;
• Slow down when you walk: this will give employees confidence that the manager is calm and knows what to do.

Anti-crisis financial management

A crisis situation can arise at any stage of a company's activity. In financial terms, they are expressed in the fact that it is growing, there are delays in tax payments. All these situations are harbingers of subsequent disability.

Principles of anti-crisis financial management:

1. Increased readiness for violations of the company's financial balance.

The financial situation in the organization is very volatile. It reacts not only to the influence of external, but also internal factors. Financial managers must be prepared for such changes that can occur at any moment.

2. Diagnosis of crisis phenomena at an early stage.

This allows time to connect all the possibilities to their neutralization.

3. Prompt response to crises.

Any crisis phenomenon can not only expand, but also give rise to others. Therefore, the sooner the anti-crisis mechanism is activated, the more likely it is that the financial balance will be restored.

4. Connecting effective forms of reorganization of the company.

If the financial condition of the organization does not allow to stop the crisis at the expense of internal reserves, it is necessary to use external assistance, which manifests itself in the form of rehabilitation. It can be carried out before the company, and in the process of it.

5. The reaction of the organization in accordance with the degree of real threat.

Mechanisms for neutralizing crisis phenomena should be commensurate with the level of their real threat. Otherwise, you will either not get the desired effect, or, conversely, you will incur too serious costs.

Stages of restoring the financial stability of the enterprise

To restore the financial stability of the enterprise, you must follow these steps:

1. Restore solvency.

This is the most urgent task to stabilize the company. Payments are made on all debt obligations, which helps to avoid bankruptcy proceedings. In such a situation, everything superfluous is cut off: they reduce current needs, reduce travel expenses, and so on.

2. Restore financial stability.

This can be done in a short period of time if a number of measures are taken, such as:

• Reduce the administrative apparatus;
• Stop the production of unprofitable products;
• Reduce the number of support services;
• Refuse programs that are funded by the profits of your enterprise.

3. We provide financial stability for a long time.

To do this, we proceed as follows:

• Introduce new types of products that can compete in the market;
• Improve the quality of your products and improve their consumer properties;
• Reduce the terms for settlements for products that you supply to others;

If a financial stability enterprises will be provided for a long time, this will reduce the attraction of credit funds.

How to make a business resilient to a crisis

It is always better to prevent problems than to solve them later. This is a simple truth and everyone knows it, but not everyone follows it.

It is also relevant in the case of a crisis in the enterprise. Therefore, we will give several recommendations for preventing the emergence of crisis phenomena.

1. Engage in the diagnosis of crisis phenomena.

Pay attention not only to the correctness of reporting, but also to analyze it. If you do this periodically and carefully, you can see the signs of a crisis before the problem needs to be fixed. You will be able to take the necessary measures immediately, and not wait until the thunder strikes.

2. Contact an anti-crisis manager.

If the situation is already serious, do not try to fix it yourself. Not the fact that you can fix it, but you will definitely make it worse. Enlist the help of a specialist who will analyze the situation, develop an action plan, and optimize your costs. This will avoid major losses.

3. Launch the anti-crisis mechanism on time.

If the symptoms have just appeared, do not delay the response. Do not bring things to a catastrophic situation. Many negative processes can be neutralized if done on time.

An example of the withdrawal of an enterprise from a crisis situation

Consider, as an example, a situation that arose a few years ago in a large chain of home appliances. It's about the Eldorado company.

The company's debt obligations exceeded 15 billion rubles. The reputation of the organization was greatly shaken, large suppliers terminated contracts, and banking organizations began to demand an urgent return of all loans.

Large financial losses were avoided, as the international investment group issued a loan for a very large amount. Then the controlling stake was bought out from the former owner, and the new owner began to carry out a set of anti-crisis measures.

For example, personnel costs have been greatly reduced. In particular, wages were reduced to the minimum, the bonus system was completely eliminated, and the managerial link was halved. The measures are certainly tough, but they gave their result, the company lost only 1% of sales.

But significant mistakes were also made: a large number of experienced employees simply refused to work in the new conditions, and truly qualified specialists were lost. As a result, many serious competitors have appeared.

From this we can conclude that the austerity regime on employees provokes completely undesirable phenomena. Still, the approach should be more flexible.

Companies offering crisis management services

Managing an enterprise in a crisis is a complex procedure. How effectively everything will go depends largely on the specialists who develop and implement the necessary processes.

We bring to your attention a small overview of companies that offer services at a high professional level:

BusinessHelper.

The company operates in all regions of the country, is engaged in management consulting. Conducts in-depth diagnostics of the company and takes into account all the specific features of a particular organization.

Navigator-Consult.

The company has been operating on the market for 14 years. All specialists of the company are certified and have the appropriate certificates. The company offers its clients audit, consulting and appraisal services.

RESTCONSALT.

The specialization of this company is and.

It offers the following range of services:

• Crisis management services;
• Services to support the activities of establishments;
• Brokerage and audit services.

Conclusion

Summarize. Thanks to competent anti-crisis management, it is possible to successfully overcome a difficult situation in the enterprise. Even if there is not enough money in your company, the problem can be solved.

And I would like to express my wishes to our readers: let the topic that we discussed today not be touched upon, and the information obtained from the article serve as just theoretical material.

A lot has already been written about the crisis, its causes, negative manifestations and ways to overcome it. Among the recommendations there are many that deserve attention and can be used in real practice. But it is very important to understand that the main condition for any successful work is consistency, which in a crisis becomes a critically necessary attribute of business management. An attempt is made below to systematically present all anti-crisis measures. The system is shown in fig. 1, it has the shape of a fish, which is called the Isshikawa diagram.

Rice. one.

Let us give a brief description of each of the factors shown in the general diagram. All of the following is an attempt to systematically integrate an integral set of anti-crisis management measures. This does not mean that all measures must be taken. After reviewing the contents of this paragraph, the manager himself must choose what suits him best and on what he should focus his efforts.

Strategy adjustment. As you know, the fish begins to deteriorate from the head. Therefore, it is necessary to start by adjusting the strategy. Leaving the company's mission unchanged, its vision should be reconsidered, refusing, apparently for a while, from achieving large ambitious goals. Although the conditions of the crisis may provoke the emergence of new ambitious goals, for example, in terms of capturing the market of bankrupt companies or acquiring weaker companies that have little chance of survival. It must be remembered that the crisis creates additional conditions for development, if you correctly use the emerging opportunities.

Reconsider your attitude to the crisis based on the following positive factors:

1. The crisis stimulates consolidation:
   • cheapening of assets will lead to the fact that the weak will die, the strong will become even stronger,
   • consolidation will most likely occur in retail grocery and household goods, banks, pharmacies, etc.
2. Managers will get the practice of managing in a crisis.
3. There will be a reassessment of the system of risks, which were considered too formally in the last period. After the crisis, risk management will become a more effective management tool.
4. "Deflate" a few " soap bubbles”, in particular, stock, real estate, oil, metals ...
5. The position of strong domestic players may be strengthened by a possible reduction in competition from imports and additional features for export.

The listed factors are named here rather conditionally. They will be positive for those who can dispose of them. And this may be the new strategy of the company.

Productivity increase. In a crisis, the decisive factor in maintaining the effectiveness of the company is speed. It turns out that the well-known formula of general relativity works in business: E=mc2 , however, with some amendments. E is the performance (performance) of the business, m is the mass (volume) of the resource used, and c - the rate at which this resource is used. The whole point here is that the speed is taken in the square, i.e. has an order of magnitude greater impact than the amount of resource used. In the period leading up to the crisis, most of the company, to put it mildly, "relaxed somewhat." The main focus was on mass m , and not at speed: a large “back office” staff was hired, constantly growing wage key specialists, realizing their importance, key specialists demanded comfortable conditions (expensive personal cars), hospitality expenses were constantly growing, expensive offices were built or rented. This list could be continued. Things got to the point that young graduates of the capital's universities demanded a starting salary of $1,000. At the same time, no one thought about speed.

The crisis came and put everything in its place. There was a rapid reassessment of values. The question was posed point-blank: “Gentlemen, highly paid managers, if you were not able to foresee the crisis and now you cannot overcome its consequences, then why do you receive high remuneration and why do business need you at all. Or turn on high speed their activities, or - goodbye, just goodbye, and not goodbye. Only those who can effectively work will remain. But being efficient doesn't mean running fast around the office. It is necessary to quickly and in detail analyze all factors of business productivity growth, if possible, excluding all activities that do not bring value to business processes. This refers to both technological and operational processes. In most cases, it is quite difficult to increase the speed of technological processes, as quality may suffer. At the same time, most organizational processes have huge reserves of acceleration. And here it is not necessary to thoughtlessly reduce staff, saving costs. Usually on the contrary, in order to increase productivity, additional costs must be incurred. At one enterprise well known to the author for a major overhaul gas wells instead of one operator at a certain stage of the technological cycle, two were used, i.e. increased costs. As a result, equipment downtime has been reduced to zero, and the rate of well workover has increased. And speed, as Einstein's formula says, is squared. In combination with other similar techniques, the amount of work performed by one team during its shift has increased. In the end, it became possible to reduce one of the five permanent teams altogether, without losing the overall turnover. The company's profit increased sharply due to the reduction of fixed costs.

This recipe is not universal - it is useful when production has a large amount of fixed overhead. As the ancient sages said, truth is always concrete. In each case, it is necessary to find those ways of improving productivity that are acceptable for a particular business. And no one, except for the specialists working at the enterprise, can do it better. True, certain tools can be recommended to these specialists.

One such tool is the Theory of Constraints (TOC) proposed by E. Goldratt. Note that this is an integral system of technologies, which in its essence reproduces the model of the weakest link, well known in technology. Suppose we want to strengthen the chain (improve the system). Where would it be most logical to focus your efforts? On the weakest link! Is it worth reinforcing something else, something that is not a limitation? Of course not. The weakest link in the chain will still break, no matter how we strengthen the rest. In other words, the effort put into the constraints will not cause immediate and noticeable improvements in the performance of the system.

Goldratt developed his approach to continuous improvement and called it The Theory of Constraints (TOC). He even described it in novels that demonstrate the use of TOC technology.

Changing attitudes towards marketing. Everyone's fears marketing agencies in a crisis, it is reasonable that “now all companies will start cutting marketing budgets.” Indeed, this is really observed during a crisis: being in a panic, companies begin to reduce what they can temporarily do without. This is, first of all, the cost of training and promotion of products on the market. Such measures look justified only at some, perhaps the very initial stage of the development of the crisis. If this strategy continues in the future, the company may simply lose its competitive advantages. The staff will not be able to solve the tasks that management sets for them, and the market will gradually forget about these competitive advantages.

Basically, there are two alternative attitudes towards marketing in a company.

Alternative 1. Marketing is the policy of consumers within the company, forcing the company to smoothly change in the direction desired by most consumers. Companies address consumers in the market like this:

• "We will give you anything you want if you become our loyal customers."
• "We are ready to spend a lot of money, if only you were our customers."

Alternative 2. Marketing must be profitable. In other words, marketing must measure the costs of promoting products with the result that is obtained as a result of numerous marketing programs in terms of understandable to everyone. economic indicators, somehow profit, cash flow, etc.

In a crisis, a shift will occur in the direction of the second alternative. But it can be achieved in different ways. The owner and management of the company can take the first, radical path. It's easy to cut down on the company's marketing staff as much as possible while slashing the budgets of all marketing programs. The problem asks whether there will be an economic effect from this. Undoubtedly yes! The reduction in total costs caused by such a reduction will lead to an increase in profits and cash flow: “Thanks to marketing, it helped us save costs, and, as you know, money saved is wage money.”

The second path within the framework of the profitable marketing alternative involves conscious behavior: 1) we soberly assess the situation, 2) we are looking for new opportunities. What is the first thing to evaluate? Most companies produce several types of products and offer them in different markets. One operating unit can serve several markets at once, with different perspectives. Different operating units may operate in the same demand area. So how many lines of business does the company actually have? Why is it important. The well-known 80/20 rule works here: 80% of the results of any activity are provided by 20% of the efforts. In a crisis, a company cannot afford to scatter resources on non-core (non-profitable) activities. First of all, it is worth focusing the attention of marketers on promising products and activities, focusing all marketing costs on this segment.

Management of economic factors. The main manifestation of the crisis from which business suffers is the lack of money. On fig. 2 is a diagram explaining the causes and manifestation of lack of money.

Rice. 2.

So, there are only three main reasons: 1) the company does not manage to sell a lot, 2) the company incurs high costs, 3) the company does not know how to manage working capital. These three reasons may not appear in standard, non-crisis circumstances, but in crisis conditions they arose due to the unwillingness of management to reorganize to work in new conditions. Worst of all, when all three causes appear at the same time, which most often happens. As you can see from the diagram, the indicators that signal to management that a problem has arisen are profit and cash flow. What should the management team focus on first in order to at least reduce the impact of the lack of money problem - on profits or on cash flow. Profit is a necessary but not sufficient condition for obtaining money. In other words, to ensure the company's ability to generate money, it must make a profit. In standard, non-crisis conditions, this condition is considered unshakable. But in a crisis, you need to generate money in any way, and do it quickly. What happens during a crisis? Sales are falling. This is a deep reason. It is not possible to fix it quickly - the markets are shrinking. Partial compensation for the drop in sales may occur due to cost reduction. This is what companies “know how” to do best. But it is not a fact that cost reduction will not lead to an even greater drop in sales, which will eventually lead to even greater losses. We discussed this possibility when analyzing marketing aspects.

During a crisis, a company needs time to restructure its activities in relation to crisis conditions: shrink, cut some activities, optimize staff. After such a restructuring, the company will learn to live in a new way and make a profit, most likely in smaller volumes, but adequate to shrinking markets. During this restructuring, the company will not be able to live without money. Therefore, money must be made or saved at any cost. So, from the two indicators of the scheme in Fig. 2 more important is the indicator of operating cash flow, rather than profit, at least in the initial stages of the crisis.

And here comes the technology of Total Money Management, or TCM, from the English term Total Cash Management. The essence of TCM is manifested in the practical implementation of the following two fundamental provisions:

1) all aspects of the enterprise's activities must involve available or fundamentally available financial resources,
2) each employee of the enterprise can influence the state of financial resources by applying some simple rules every day.

In many real situations, managers of enterprises in the course of their activities do not realize the exceptional importance of money. They do not understand that money is a completely liquid asset. Having money, an enterprise can solve absolutely all problems, both technological, and marketing, and all the rest. This is especially acute in times of crisis. The pragmatic goal of TCM is to create a system that:

• on the one hand, it contributes to the efficient generation of cash flows,
• and on the other hand, it contributes to their no less effective use, again with the aim of generating subsequent cash flows.

It is important to understand that TCM does not consist of "Save Money" slogans alone that must be posted throughout the firm in order to succeed. This is far from the case: TCM is, first of all, a system that covers all the activities of the company. The figure shows the main blocks of TCM.

Rice. 3.

The systemic nature of the TCM concept is manifested not only in the fact that each functional unit and even each person plays a role in the implementation of strategic guidelines, but also in the fact that an additional effect can be created at the junction between units. In other words, improvements in one of the blocks shown in the figure may cause changes in other blocks, so that the cumulative effect may be either greater or less than the sum of the two individual effects.

Transformation of investment and financial activities. It is generally accepted that during a crisis, investment activity should be reduced. Real practice proves this, judging by the numerous reports of the suspension or termination of the construction of new production facilities, the cancellation of earlier decisions on investment. The reduction in investment activity is due to the fact that 1) there is simply not enough funds, 2) the prospects for new investment projects are unclear.

At the same time, the crisis provides an opportunity to increase the company's assets and expand the scope of its activities through the absorption of other more weak enterprises. There is no doubt that in a period of crisis there is a redistribution of property - the strong absorb the weak.

So, the transformation of investment activity should be considered from two positions:

1) developing an attitude towards investment decisions made before the crisis,
2) analysis of opportunities to increase investment activity by acquiring new assets, using a probable decrease in their price.

In a crisis, the procedures and technologies used for conducting the investment activity itself should be reviewed. Here are typical features of the investment activity of domestic companies:

1. The task of investment development, which is important for business, is solved through outsourcing (assigned to a consulting company).
2. Closed software products such as Project Expert, which do not provide a transparent view of the business for the owner and management.
3. The focus is on cash flow forecasting and calculation of standard indicators (NPV, IRR, DPB) without deep insight into the practical economics of the project. At the same time, the choice of the discount rate does not correspond to the specifics of project financing.
4. Investment analysis lasts for 2-4 months and ends with a rather cumbersome description containing many unnecessary details.
5. It is often not possible to trace a direct link between a business idea and/or technological improvement and the economics of the project.

In a crisis, this is not good. The main task of investment design in a crisis environment is as follows:

We do it for ourselves, quickly and without errors.

So, as before, the speed and quality of decisions made. Agree that there is nothing simpler than making a decision to buy companies that are rapidly losing their effectiveness, as a result of which their owners are ready to sell them cheaply. And then what? Resell to someone for a higher price. This is what so-called portfolio investors usually do. It is not certain that this speculative operation will be successful. So, you need to buy, following strategic goals. During the crisis, the takeover of weak companies will be carried out mainly by a strategic investor. The latter, by definition, will seek to develop the purchased object in order to earn even more money on it.

The strategic investor has two problems. First, you need to act quickly, otherwise another strategic investor will get ahead. Secondly, you cannot make a wrong decision, otherwise the money spent will not be returned. To minimize the risks of these two mistakes, the investment technologies used must meet the following requirements:

1. The technology must allow quick and correct conclusions about the feasibility of investments.
2. Technology must be flexible, i.e. able to make multiple recalculations depending on changing conditions.
3. Technology must be individual, i.e. reflect the features of the existing business and the special requests of the owners and top management.
4. Technology must be open and transparent: the occurrence of each indicator must be traced ( widely used Project Expert does not meet this requirement).
5. Technology must be as clear as possible for a possible potential investor: it is enough to show justify marketing forecasts and show financial tables, and the investor is ready to make a decision.

If a company owns such technology, it is able to avoid these mistakes. Otherwise, enterprises with a negative economic result will be bought and resold.

Financial activities companies in a crisis occurs in the most stressful conditions. In essence, all enterprises are moving to a starvation financial ration. This primarily concerns credit sources of financing.

Having problems with money, the head of the company should not “write off” all of them for the crisis. A crisis, even an external one, actually reveals the company's hidden problems. There are three groups of reasons that lead the company to a shortage of money. The first group includes market reasons, which can be both external and internal. These are, first of all, a drop in sales volumes and shortcomings in assortment management. Indeed, sales volumes may fall external reason, i.e. due to market shrinkage, or may be the result of an imperfect marketing strategy of the company. Even if the markets are shrinking, marketing strategy must find a way to save volumes. Among the internal causes of the shortage of money is the imperfection of the financial management system, which manifests itself in

• lack of management accounting
• poor financial planning
• low qualification of financial managers,
• suboptimal financial management structure,
• loss of control over costs.

The emerging external crisis should reveal all internal causes, increasing the perfection of all aspects of the company's activities, in the face of objectively existing external causes.

What to do to reduce the shortage of money. First of all, one should not succumb to panic and systematically present the directions in which it is necessary to act. The system of measures presented in fig. 4 looks very simple.

Rice. 4.

Having built a kind of Procrustean bed of the system, it is necessary to think in detail possible ways. These measures will vary from company to company. Below is a list of the most typical measures for each of the groups.

1. Short-term measures to increase the inflow of money:
   • sale or lease of non-current assets,
   • rationalization of the product range,
   • restructuring of receivables into financial instruments,
   • use of partial prepayment,
   • development of a system of discounts for buyers,
   • attraction of credit sources of short-term financing.
2. Short-term measures to reduce the outflow of money:
   • cost reduction,
   • deferment of payments on obligations,
   • use of supplier discounts,
   • revision of the investment program,
   • tax planning,
   • bill settlements and offsets.
3. Long-term measures to increase the flow of money:
   • additional issue of shares and bonds,
   • restructuring of the company - liquidation or separation into separate business units,
   • search for a strategic investor,
   • looking for a portfolio investor.
4. Long-term measures to reduce the outflow of money:
   • long-term contracts providing for discounts or deferred payments,
   • tax planning.

It is clear that not all of the above measures are equally available in times of crisis; this applies, for example, to the additional issue of shares or bonds. However, a systematic search for financial opportunities should lead to success.

Mega motivational system. This aspect of the overall program for the transformation of the company's activities in a crisis is shown in the diagram in fig. 1 in the form of a fish tail. As you know, with the help of its tail, the fish increases the speed of its movement. This is the meaning of the mega-motivational system. All of the above factors of restructuring the company's activities should start to work very quickly, as many leaders like to say: "I need to do it yesterday." How to make it all start working as soon as possible? The fundamental answer is simple: it is necessary to put the company's personnel in conditions when they themselves will be interested or forced to do it. I remember a fragment of the film “Peculiarities of the National Hunt”, when a cow was transported in an airplane bomb bay. She could not be ejected from the bomb bay. Then the commander very figuratively put it: “if you want to live, you won’t get so upset.”

This is the fundamental meaning of the term megamotivation. Megomativation can be implemented in two polar ways:

1) reduce N% of the staff, motivating the rest with the opportunity to continue working,
2) switch to pay-by-result, giving people the opportunity to earn by achieving higher goals that appear as a result of the crisis.

The first way is trivial, but it can be effective. The final effect of this method will be determined by the extent to which the manager correctly “cleanses” the ranks of his staff. If the remaining staff can “spread out” in order for everyone to survive, then the effect is guaranteed. If they start flying out of the bomb bay, it means that they “cleaned out” the wrong ones.

In this sense, the second method is more insured against errors. The company's staff is far from homogeneous in terms of their managerial skills and ability to work in crisis conditions. Since no one has experience of working in the difficult conditions of a crisis, management skills should manifest themselves (or appear) in the process of the crisis itself. This won't happen to everyone. But the owner or manager must create conditions for the personnel that will allow the employees to understand for themselves whether their abilities and skills correspond to the tasks set. This can be done by creating a motivational system that minimizes the fixed part of the reward and fundamentally increases the variable part, which will be determined by the achieved result. Under such conditions, incapable workers will leave on their own, as they will not be able to solve their goals and earn decent money. This approach can be formalized using KPIs, which quantitatively describe the task assigned to the employee. The technology for determining the variable part is described using fig. 5.

Rice. 5.

As follows from the diagram of the figure, if the employee reaches the planned KPI value, he receives the planned reward. The amount of remuneration decreases proportionally with a decrease in the actually achieved KPI and becomes zero if the achieved KPI becomes less than a certain minimum value (point min in the figure). If the actually achieved KPI becomes higher than the planned value, then the premium increases, but not indefinitely, but up to a certain number (max point in the figure). The last feature of this algorithm insures the manager against understating the planned KPI value. During a crisis, the whole picture shifts to the right, setting higher goals for the employee and allowing him to earn more. If in such a situation the permanent part of earnings is made very small, for example, at the level of the living wage accepted in the country, the worker will be forced to do everything possible and impossible to survive. And it again resembles a cow in a bomb bay.

The listed approaches are a motivational technology for individual managers, a kind of bonus tool. If the owner and manager thinks strategically, he must understand that this tool alone is not enough. He must analyze not only the current problems and how the company will live after the crisis. A strategically thinking leader must understand that he alone is not able to bring the company out of the crisis. To work in a crisis, a critical condition is the presence or creation of a team. Only a strong team is able not only to withstand the crisis, but also to gain new advantages. You need to analyze who is on your team. What features and personal traits are characteristic of team members, and what tasks they solve.