Going faster during the slow-down

Richard Noble and Andy Green, who achieved the world landspeed record in 1997, last week announced that they want to go even faster: 1000 mph in fact. We can expect to see this in 2011.

The BBC announced this news on the same day that Governor of the Bank of England uttered "Recession" on Radio Four's Today programme.

Breaking the LSR to an extent of 1000 mph will be utterly awesome if it faces anything like the challenges presented on the fly during the last project, which achieved the still-standing record of 763 mph. And it will indeed be awesome. Engineering will again be at the edge of its limit: the record stands for over 10 years, and 1000 mph is faster than the record for a low-altitude aircraft. Already, the plan is to change the jet when turning around for the return trip. The team is now looking for a 15-mile stretch of flat stone-free desert, and it is justified in doing this considering the footage of route walking and incidence analysis that it went through last time (The Mission: Supersonic Dreams [not playable online]). This project has the experience to fulfill its goal, regardless of a recession.

It makes me wonder whether it is that the big ideas will keep succeeding while every other is put on ice, and whether the big ideas will be kickstarting those that have stalled whenever there is a return of Confidence.

If so, I hope that the big ideas pushing through to the end will belong to a New Economics (sales of Das Kapital have risen 300% in Germany this year), that they will recognise the value of a producer's labour above that of materials, which is the way that Richard Noble approached his last project.

He operated on a shoestring, not knowing if a sponsor would come forward with his fuel costs, and even, towards the end of the season, with the vagaries of climate (quite ironically considering the stock markets' volatilite reactions to the economic climate); he succeeded because of the dedication of his people. Now he helps teams become more effective using his Transformation Dynamics model.

The concomitant announcements of the LSR and a putative recession could be prescient with my first-hand experiences on the same day (I'll give the wry details another day, suffice to say that I'll be talking about the food industry within the UK motorway service and pub restaurant chains), but it is just that I am looking for such connections and choose to interpret my observations. Staff can be hindered from serving a business's customers or the converse, staff can be empowered and make profits when there are less people prepared to part with their money.

Businesses with the big R on their minds have a choice: do business better for the same price (in this instance, invest in staff and they will be more inspired in their work) or do business worse for cheaper (cut investment in staff and offer nothing special). The difference in choice reflects the dogma, with which I happen to agree even while I don't like it, that selling for cheaper doesn't work in a recession: that is, when money is tight, sell to those want to pay more simply because they are the ones who can afford to make the decision to spend. Are China's toy and textile industries suffering simply because they serve the lower income market?

Taking a long-term view, businesses should follow the first option, maintain and improve standards and operations, and even more so in a recession so they can be ready to take opportunities when they present themselves again.

In fact, the supersonic car website says much the same thing in terms of education. Go faster, Andy, go faster!