Every day there are a number of companies that struggle to pay their bills. The world is speeding past them and they could be oblivious to the peril that they are in. The myopic vision of the company’s leadership can be, in itself, excused but when hundreds of jobs rely on their decisions, that is where a sense of injustice creeps in.

What leads to a company’s demise?

Customers no longer see value in the goods or services on offer, or they feel that their relationship is not flourishing or that it is only a one way street. One thing is certain: the company has stopped innovating, has stopped investing in itself and in its people and is on ‘cruise control’, i.e., it is satisfied with the status quo.

The worst thing that could happen at such a juncture would be for the bank to call in a note.

It is then that the survival instinct kicks in. The Chairman stands back from the day-to-day mayhem and earns his keep. He makes decisions. Many of them should be painful. If they are pleasant, the fruit they will bear may be bitter.

It is at this time that he should call in a third-party, a professional or a professional group, who can assess the current status, determine what has worked and what needs to be fixed and what it will take to stabilize the ship before embarking on the next stage. Too many companies want to grow but not realize that this is not possible in the presence of a haemorrhaging wound.

The number of people who are in leadership position who pick up the telephone and are prepared to be counselled is pitifully few.  In the absence of this courage, near-death experience could deal a mortal blow.

Bar financial havens, steel has been an important part of all industrialization processes.   Britain, United States and Germany, Japan, Taiwan and Korea owe their success to steelmaking and this ability to make steel continues to be an essential input into all manufacturing economies. ‘National strength flows from iron and steel’, is the inscription that hangs at POSCO’s headquarters in Pohang, South Korea, the location of Korea’s first steel plant.

The success in steelmaking hangs on scale, corralling a limited number of inputs and incrementally improving the technology that has, at its core, not undergone much change in almost two centuries. The challenges that this brings about are best addressed under state ownership. Initially, the governments of Japan, Taiwan and Korea owned the steel plants. Policy-making also was in the state’s realm. These three nations ended up making exceptional steel and, at least in the case with Japan and Korea, eventually passed on the plants to private interests.

Malaysia tried the Taiwanese model of public ownership but fell woefully short in this important sector and the auto industry in this country, like all large-scale manufacturing in Malaysia, is nothing but a white elephant. In the meantime, in Korea, owing to private industry running steel as well as the important auto sector, theHyundai-Kia colossus became nothing short of a world-beater. This was all possible with export discipline.

The entrepreneur is compelled to compete in the international arena. The automotive sector is exceptionally brutal and cyclical. Korea’s government managed this sector very well by giving subsidies to a handful of hungry entrepreneurs who were measured by success in the export market. In a process that lasted almost 4 decades, the handful were slowly whittled down to Hyundai-Kia.

On the other hand, United States Steel, US Steel, attempted a hybrid model and did not place over-riding emphasis  on export and after a colourful history that involved JP Morgan, Andrew Carnegie and Charles Schwab, forays in Serbia and Canada, it is falling on hard times.

Strategy, how to formulate it, implement it and determine its effectiveness is much talked about but little understood. Metastrategy, Inc removes the fluff and comes up with meaningful insights and action plans.