JUAN TRIPP
His answer was to buy £50M worth of snow equipment in the middle of March!! The clever people in this world are proactive not reactive.
Being pro-active is soooo last century. What has happened in the last 25 years is that people are paid for different reasons. Briefly ...
Then: Learn the business; Work your way up the company, learning from all and (hopefully) helping all; plan ahead and budget for worst case. If it doesn't happen - you were ready for it and the business ran smoothly. You got a bonus because nothing went wrong.
Now: Get a degree in 'management'; get posted into a company half way up so that you have no REAL WORKING knowledge of how the biz functions. Save money, cut back on routine maintenance - if it was done every month, make every other month; if it was 6 months, make it 9 etc. Keep a record of all the money that you save to impress the bosses. Move on. IF THE WORST HAPPENS WHILST YOU ARE STILL THERE then:-
Rush in and 'fix' it. Be there 24x7, sleeves rolled up to show the boss how hard you are working (the staff already know) then spend most of the money that you would have spent on planning and routine maintenance. Try to impress the shareholders/interested parties, how much you are spending so that 'this never happens again'. Make sure that everyone above you knows that it was you that fixed it and collect your bonus.
Then move on quick.
Simples.