How to Stay on the Move ... When the World Is Slowing Down

How do you stay committed to your plans -- and energized about the future -- when the economic climate goes from "the sky's the limit" to "the sky is falling"? Running a young public company, even a healthy one, is a different game now that so many other young public companies are toast. Launching a new service (even one that passes every test for price, performance, and features) can be a brutal challenge if your industry is haunted by failures. Being an Internet evangelist inside a big company used to be the fast track to stardom. Now it can feel like a road to career suicide -- even if your business plan is rock solid.

People and companies who think big don't want to scale back on their aspirations. They do, however, have to rethink their strategies, tactics, and timetables. What happens when the going gets tough? Tough-minded leaders keep going, because they understand that most of their rivals will give up -- leaving them bigger opportunities down the road. "Now is the best time to innovate," declares Steven Berglas, a psychologist, consultant, and business professor at UCLA's Anderson School. "Companies should give their best performers the same latitude in bad times as they do in good times. Conservatism in business is the kiss of death."

What follows, then, are insights from and case studies of leaders who are responding to tough times by reaffirming their faith in their strategies -- and who are managing to stay on the move, even as the rest of the world is slowing down.

Keep Your Eyes on the Road -- Not on the Accidents

AvantGo Inc. is headquartered in a spiffy office complex in Hayward, California, on the eastern edge of San Francisco Bay. Immediately across the highway from AvantGo is another office complex where, on the day that I was visiting CEO Richard Owen and his team, auctioneers were going through the headquarters of another technology company, AllAdvantage.com, assaying its servers, desks, and cell phones as a prelude to a bankruptcy sale.

AvantGo and AllAdvantage have little in common. AvantGo develops software that helps companies make their enterprise applications work on such mobile devices as PalmPilots and BlackBerries. AvantGo's neighbor had pursued a dubious business plan: paying people to surf the Net and showing them ads while they did it. While AvantGo has a much more solid model (the company licenses its software by the seat to customers like Ford, where 20,000 users can track data on the company's operational performance via their handhelds), its employees weren't unaware of their neighbor's fate.

"There's a lot of negativity outside these walls," says Owen, 36. "Employees here don't feel that we're in the same business as a Pets.com or an AllAdvantage. But there's a lot of virtual rubbernecking that happens. People talk to each other; they have friends who worked at these companies."

A significant part of Owen's job since he joined the company last year to help take it public has been to keep AvantGo's 300 employees focused on the opportunities before them, rather than on the misery that surrounds them. It has been an enlightening experience for Owen, who ran Dell Computer's online business before joining AvantGo. "I went through eight years at Dell without listening to one earnings call," he says. "Now every employee in this building listens to our earnings calls. I have to be aware of everything they're hearing that might get them concerned and be able to address it."

That's why Owen considers himself to be the company's chief communicator. "I spend a lot of time talking about the company's prospects. But lately, I've started to speak less and do more Q&A." All-hands meetings take place monthly on AvantBeach, the outdoor deck built in the parking lot behind the company's headquarters. The company fires up its own barbecue grills, and Owen takes questions from all comers.

AvantGo employees aren't shy. They've asked Owen whether the company has enough cash on hand to get to profitability (it does) and whether the company's path to profitability is fast enough. But they've also asked questions such as whether the company ought to take advantage of declining rents in San Francisco and open an office there. Owen says that early in his tenure at AvantGo, he was reluctant to send out broadcast emails to address rumors that were circulating around the company. Now he doesn't hesitate if he feels the rumor might be distracting enough. "A lot of times, they're related to the stock price, the ups and downs. I've explained to people that we're a small-cap company with a small float. It will be bumpy for a while."