Organizational Maturity

It seems to me that we are facing increasingly shorter cycles of economic ups and downs. Additionally, in many regions availability of well-trained IT personnel seems to vary in an opposite cycle as the need for additional staff.

Therefore, in a constraint regional labor market it happens that during prosperous times IT companies find themselves fiercely competing for talent. As a result IT companies often end up hiring everyone at least interested in their respective field just to fill their ranks.

When things turn bad in economic downturns the real problems arise. People hired for desperately filling open positions during high times mostly have not the potential for improving their performance to satisfy tighter efficiency requirements. But improved efficiency throughout a company is the most important measure for staying in the market when things are turning bad.

So what can a company expect when economic downturns are getting increasingly frequent but it is not able to get (keep) a critical mass of staffers who are able to cope with increasingly demanding efficiency pressures?