Page 9 - MS Year in Review 2020

THE BOTTOM LINE: KEY LESSONS

Stepping back from the individual crises and events, what can be learned as key
lessons? Some of the key insights are:

 Always protect the core assets; but carefully define what the "core

assets" are.
 Take a long-term perspective in making decisions about what is “essential”

not an immediate perspective.
 Plans are nothing; planning is everything!
 In planning for the future, you must plan for the future infrastructure

required for possible future levels of operations.
 A business must have revenue to be profitable and must have profit to be
valuable.

 A business’s value is not "the eyes of the beholder"; it is the discounted
worth of the stream of earnings and/or cash flow of the enterprise.
 Downsizing or so-called “right sizing” must be done with a scalpel rather

than a meat clever!
 If you can’t control something or do anything about it, there is a no

point worrying about it.

Of course, there is also “Murphy’s Law,” which, as we know, states “what can go
wrong will go wrong!” Finally, however, there is what might be termed the

“Flamholtz Principle,” which states: “Murphy was correct, but we can always
take action and fix it, if we adopt the right perspective”!

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