Letter from 23 Nobel laureates to Temer: companies have a similar problem

Last week, 23 Nobel Prize winners from recent decades sent a letter to President Michel Temer warning of the dire consequences that successive cuts in investment in science and technology could bring to the country's future.

The fact that a group of international celebrities mobilized to reinforce the warning, already repeatedly issued by the national scientific community and not heeded, shows the seriousness of the situation.

Cutting investment in this area is “easy” for the government, since it brings no immediate consequences for the population, nor does it trigger reactions from legislators concerned with keeping budget amendments that have a greater impact on their positioning for the upcoming election year.

But the long-term consequences are incalculable. Significant cuts, like the ones that have been happening, cause setbacks of decades in just a few years, because they rapidly destroy the already weak infrastructure and the interest of an entire generation of potential scientists.

Responding to crises by cutting things that have no immediate consequence, but that compromise the future, is something that happens not only in government, but also in companies.

Look at how most companies respond to crises. What is the first area that usually suffers cuts? I know countless companies in which the answer to this question is immediate: training.

In many cases, one of the first measures to contain spending hits the people management area. Cutting specialists in the area, development programs, canceling the intake of new interns and trainees, etc., which creates a real hole in the future flow of qualified people, the greatest competitive asset of any company.

Another area targeted for immediate cuts in crises is product development. The mental model followed is the same: in the desperation of the crisis, something that is a current expense and that will generate revenue only in the future gets cut. But this delays the new generation of products, which could take the company to a differentiated competitive level.

As the popular saying goes, in times of crisis, some companies (and countries) seem to sell lunch to pay for dinner. In the examples above, they actually seem to be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs to make dinner. They kill the main asset that can generate wealth in the future: people, knowledge and innovation.

Companies that manage to maintain, even in crises, their investments in things that build the future, on the other hand, will have enormous competitive advantages, leaping ahead of their competitors when economic activity picks up again.

The predominant mental model is: if we don't survive today, there will certainly be no tomorrow. Let's cut everything that generates expenses and doesn't provide an immediate return. By this logic, there goes the future.

The only way out of this trap is to change this mental model, adopting totally different premises: preserve as much as possible the areas and investments that will prepare us for the future; turn attention not to cutting what does not generate immediate revenue, but to combating the enormous sources of waste that exist today; and accelerate new ways of adding more value for customers.

It is, without a doubt, a harder path in the short term. But one that certainly paves the way to a much more promising future.