When a recession strikes, you:
1. Take a breath,
2. Look at your situation and assess it:
- Evaluate the economic impact.
- Do a business financial health check.
- Undertake a market and competitor analysis to evaluate weaknesses,
and potential opportunities.
3. Establish priorities. Both immediate and strategic:
- Manage cash flow.
- Improve operational efficiency.
- Enhance customer satisfaction and retention.
- Manage risk exposure.
- Explore market opportunities.
4. Optimise your available resources:
- Look at smarter cost management practices.
- Re-allocate resources into areas that will strengthen the business.
- Invest in and develop your people resource.
5. Adopt a more agile approach to business and communication:
- Tune your business model to allow it to pivot more quickly.
- Invest in innovation and differentiation.
- Enhance customer-centric strategies that focus on customer needs.
- Become more proactive in your communications.
- Improve brand identity,
- build trust, and
- demonstrate resilience and vision.
6. Internally within your organisation:
- Demonstrate resilient leadership with a forward-looking vision.
- Engage, involve, and empower staff to make a difference.
- Build trust by open and transparent communication.
7. Position yourself for post-recession growth.
- Take advantage of competitor weaknesses to build market share.
- Incorporate scalability and growth into your systems and processes.
- Build brand loyalty by supporting customers through the tough times.
8. Finally:
- Stay agile so that you can quickly adapt in a fluid marketplace.
- Be prepared to respond to and capitalise on any fast recovery.
- Implement a culture of continuous improvement.
On a personal note.
As a FileMaker developer, building solutions that enable change,
I have been part of, and witnessed first-hand, the empowering impact of businesses taking charge of their destiny, overcoming obstacles and flourishing.
My advice to anyone experiencing the fear and uncertainty that a recession brings, is to:
“Embrace that fear. Face the uncertainty. Make it work for you.”