Katrina Roche: We can all learn from looking at how companies such as Dell used a downturn like this to change the rules in the PC industry. Dell stopped and asked, What business are we in? It couldn't compete with Packard Bell, which was doing a great job of handling finance when it was all about cash flow. Instead, Dell focused on being competitive through speed. Today, a lot of companies are asking, How can I stop building up these inventories myself? How can I increase the velocity of my business? How can I start working better with partners?
Tom Rohrs: It's all about leveraging relationships. In this period of change, the companies that can find a way to collaborate with their customers, employees, and suppliers to come up with a new way of doing business together are the ones that can change the game.
Roy M. Spence Jr.: There's an old country song called "Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places." We spend way too much time inside our own organizations. What's going on outside our companies, where all the customers are? The American people are waiting for businesses to take the leadership position. I'm not talking about patriotic flag waving. I'm talking about a leadership position that says, We're moving on. Our message to our clients is simple: Go out there and be more productive than you've ever been, and your business will come.
Morris Miller: The biggest bummer that we had as a startup was when we weren't able to go public. So we had to figure out what we were going to do. Instead of doing layoffs, we told our employees, "There's a hiring freeze. Everybody who's here is going to stay here." A year later, we have not added one person -- but business has doubled. We communicated to our people the idea that the downturn may have kept us from going public, but we're all going to be around to see a brighter day.
Kevin Krone: The business environment since September 11 has become complex for our industry and our company. The first thing you have to do is enlist your employees' support. You tell them the truth: We are facing a huge challenge -- one that we have never seen before. This is the time to rise to the occasion, perform, and win our customers back. Your customers want to carry on -- and you can't betray them.
Alan Webber: If this is a time to take advantage of opportunities, where do you double down?
Fred Chang: If you look at the places where multiple roads intersect -- with customers, with partners, with suppliers -- a little bit of change and chaos is always happening in the middle. That's where your resources should go. You can begin to push an advantage that's not only a strategic advantage but that's also a daily operational advantage.
Ian Downes: I've been through three downturns in my career, and this one is different. There's a lot more collaboration and a lot more outsourcing. Companies are concentrating on what they're best at and jettisoning some components that have traditionally been part of their business. It takes a lot of courage for leaders to say, "I'm going to place a bet -- not just exclusively within my walls, but also with friends and colleagues."
Tom Rohrs: At Applied Materials, we're using this downturn to go outside our traditional business model. We're a capital-equipment company that has 40 or 50 big customers out in the world. But for the first time, in the midst of this downturn, we're putting together a mass-media ad campaign. We have the financial wherewithal to make this bet, and we didn't think that any of our competitors could do it.
Steve Moffitt: At Dynegy, we are using our skill in energy commodities to do broadband trading. The trading business is very different from the energy-exploration-and-production business. It's much faster paced, for one thing. The technology changes on a 12-to-18-month cycle, not a 5-to-10-year cycle.
Kevin Krone: Look for a process that irritates your customers and automate it or offer a more convenient way to do it. Look internally at a process that requires 12 employees, automate it, and then redeploy those people to something that will make a positive contribution for customers.
Alan Webber: We've gotten some great advice about what to do to get faster and be more nimble and how to put our money in the right place during a downturn. But I can only do one thing on Monday morning. What's the one piece of advice that you would want to give me?
Sunny Vanderbeck: Most of the time in an environment like this, you already know the answers. You just don't want to hear them from yourself. So I would advise you to take the day off, go find those answers, and come back with a resolve to do whatever it is that you need to do in your business.
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