“Let us beware of the illusion that this short-term relief will be sufficient for surviving the next twelve months. In terms of speed of reaction in times of crisis, Romanian top decision-makers were not able to keep pace with their neighbors in Eastern Europe,” Weiss said.
The consultant added that local business leaders focused exclusively on survival measures – ensuring working capital, rescheduling loans, personnel cuts – and forgot about long-term scenarios. “Compared to other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, local companies were not yet confronted with high loan pressure from the banks,” the Partner of A.T. Kearney added.
Weiss said that the key challenge of decision-makers in Romania is how to achieve mobilization of the complete company in the coming weeks and months to react adequately to the environment. Radical decisions are not very important in this period, but rather maintaining a balance between strategic long-term measures and operating actions, with immediate impact. “Radical decisions might sound cool and impressive in the media, but will not be the right response for the business model,” Weiss said.
