Today I’m going to take a contrarian view on the current economic situation. While it is easy to become consumed by the constant drumbeat of today’s negative news-cycle, the reality is it is largely out of our control.

As business managers and leaders, what we can control is how we react to the situation. So here are 11 benefits of the current recession:

1. It enables you to get closer to your current customers.
2. It forces you to focus on the most important things first, whether they be problems or opportunities. Focus is good.
3. It causes you to get creative and spend more time thinking “outside-the-box”.
4. It forces you to make the tough decisions which you’ve been putting off. Good times have a way of “masking” problems which we can conveniently ignore. Bad times force us to take action.
5. It thins out the competition. The weakest players in each respective market will not survive. This is marketplace survival of the fittest.
6. It makes you realize you can’t take anything for granted.
7. It makes it easier to abandon business-as-usual. Now is the time to critically examine the “sacred cows” in your business and in your industry. As the last downturn proved, new and innovative powerhouses will arise out of the rubble.
8. It brings you back to business basics. Relationships. Revenue. Expenses. Talent. They all matter.
9. It accelerates, and lowers resistance to, change.
10. It causes you to be less wasteful. Now is the time to evaluate every expense and every process in your business. If you build a cost effective business foundation now, you will not only increase the odds of survival, but also emerging stronger in the inevitable upturn.
11. And finally, on that note, it serves as a reminder that the next boom is that much closer!

I’m sure I missed some. What benefits do you see in the recession?

In a macro context this downturn will likely be good for the United States. It’s time for consumers to get back to the basics of living below their means, saving money, and planning for rainy days. Those same principles apply to businesses: strategic organizations are making investments today that will yield positive benefits in the recovery.

This entry was posted by Kimball Norup on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 8:07 am in Business Strategy, Executive perspective. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.