Yes, you are reading this correctly.  There is no doubt that 2009 will go down in history as a year full of challenges and will always be thought of as the year of recession.  Personally, I could have lived without having to think about furloughs and workforce reductions.  But this year has also been fascinating to me because of the many businesses that I have come across, which managed to not only survival, but even thrived under the most difficult conditions.  They have figured out that superior core ethics and flexible strategic risk taking can bring you back into the middle of the business opportunities.

Of course there are certain business segments – construction and thus cement being a few of them – that are as volatile as they come and the phone just stopped ringing.  For some of us the company size and product range may be too inflexible.  There are all kinds of good reasons why your business has suffered and you had to react however you had to react to at least stay afloat. Regardless, I assert that there are two omni important things you can do to get back into a blazing saddle:

Get your own core ethics in shape and make sure that people know you for it; it is useless how many people you know.  Now is the time where you have to have a lot of people that will give you the first call for any business that they may be able to afford.  Core ethics and values are essential in keeping and maintaining a great dependable and knowledgeable workforce that can manage to be friendly to everyone – who wants to deal with miserable people when there is so little to smile about to begin with?  Know what your brand is and make sure your people know and live it too.  This nimble workforce and your brand image is going to help you putting revenue into your business, and you know that cash is still king.

The second success factor is that you need to take controlled risks.  You must know what is going on with your customers.  Now is not the time to skimp with your sales and definitely not your marketing budgets.  Make sure that your management team hits the road and sees your customers – period.  This does two things for your organization.  On one hand your top leadership gets to know how a customer really perceives you.  You get the opportunity to see and feel the discrepancy with your board room decisions and strategies.  The other side of the equation is that you get to know how you can help putting cash into the pocket of your customers by solving their issues or perhaps you get to create a need they did not even know that they had.

Either way, you and your leadership team are coming home with a punch list that is more or the less the roadmap to your continuing success.  Now you need to be just brave enough to act upon it and you will be off to a stellar 2010.

Ralf Weiser

Copyright:  Ralf Weiser 2009