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SchmidPreisslerConsultants · Innovative Strategic Advice - Research - Analysis - Market Solutions · Established 1961
April 2024
Strategies built on sand
Politics is failing, "Brussels" is no longer comprehensible, Trump, if elected, will teach the Europeans to fear. We are experiencing a mini-recession because German industry is relocating production to low-wage countries. And anyway: nothing seems to be right anymore. What, one wonders, is making the world so crazy? What makes us stumble from one irritation, from one perplexity to another? What makes events so unpredictable?
The economy is helpless and powerless. Day-to-day management and "flying on sight" are being practiced more and more frequently in order to get at least the seemingly most important things done. And even where there is talk of strategies, caution is advised. Many of them are built on sand, which will be washed away overnight by the waves of daily events - like the sand on the beach. And too many of these strategies are created overnight. They are sprinkled around as a sedative pill or naively propagated in the belief that they can solve problems in passing. They are based on assumptions and hopes or on figures that often do not even justify the computer time and are not worth the paper they are printed on.
One example of such a strategy built on sand is that of replacing the combustion engine with e-mobility from one day to the next. In addition to making a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions worldwide, politicians and the automotive industry hoped that this would inject new growth momentum into Europe's economy. We, the Germans, as Europe's “paragons”, wanted to be the first and best at the service of the Commission in Brussels in implementing the e-mobility strategy. And therefore, the Mercedes-Benz Group launched an advertising campaign costing millions of euros in which it announced the end of its combustion engine production. Volkswagen AG announced the redundancy of 30,000 employees and the end of the successful Golf model series. The German government rewarded the purchase of e-mobiles with generous bonuses from taxpayers' money.
Forgotten or deleted when writing the strategy were the ideas and implementation plans for a charging network, new safety and insurance regulations, the design of the used car market and the organization of maintenance and service costs for e-models, a reorganization of the automotive trade and, from a global perspective, the consequences for mobility in developing countries.
If they are to be successful, strategies need a solid foundation and must be free of utopias. They require broad and well-founded knowledge and experience. Their development and implementation require a sense of what is feasible, despite all the enthusiasm for new ideas. They need realistic goals, time and personalities who support and stand up for them.
Developing, taking responsibility for and implementing strategies requires confident thinking and action. The basis is NI, Natural Intelligence, common sense, an unbent sense of reality, a feeling for the human element and objectivity.
Your F. M. Schmid-Preissler
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SchmidPreissler International Strategy Consultants GmbH · Ismaninger Straße 140 · D-81675 München · Tel. +49 89 139 29579 Fax: +49 8022 26042 · Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein! · Register Amtsgericht München HRB 5285 Geschäftsführer: Franz M. Schmid-Preissler, Philomena Schmid-Preissler · Usta-IDF-Nr. DE 143 178 51317 Für den Inhalt verantwortlich (MStG): Franz M. Schmid-Preissler - Anschrift siehe oben
