050: Anders Dahlvig – A Counter-Intuitive Downturn Strategy

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This was drawn by A. Kelly. Check out his work at his blog.

Anders Dahlvig is the past CEO of IKEA. That’s an accomplishment in itself, considering that he started in the company as a store manager. And as the comic suggests, he definitely has a head for business.

For our 50th comic, I thought we do something special. This comic is longer than our average and comes from a chapter in the book, Crisis As Opportunity (Lessons Learned), by Harvard Business Press. The book is a collection of real life short stories from business leaders. They share lessons they have learnt in the real world. There is a series of such books, each with its own theme. The one that this comic comes from is about, as the title says, creating opportunities from crisis.

The opportunity in crisis idea has been around for a long time now. We even did another comic about it based on Chinese wordplay. I don’t have to repeat the idea again. However, what is interesting here is that the Crisis As Opportunity book lists true stories. More evidence that these things do happen. So I want to remind everyone that if you are in a crisis now, make the most of it. There might be a hidden opportunity you can’t see.

And if you really can’t find this opportunity, you should get the Crisis As Opportunity book to get some ideas.

Let me know if you have real life examples of seizing opportunity from the crisis in the comments below.

And of course, don’t forget to subscribe to Rational Comics. New comics every Monday.