Are you among the business leaders who believe the economy is starting to pick up? Or do you foresee another year or two of tough going for your business? Regardless of where you stand on the subject, chances are you’re at least thinking about how economic recovery will affect your business. I hope you’re giving serious thought to preparing now for the better market conditions to come.

No, that wasn’t a typo. You need to prepare your business for the rebounding economy. Chances are you’ve cut headcount and budgets over the last two years. You’ve asked your employees to jump through hoops to keep customers happy – and they’ve done it. If you haven’t given a lot of thought to why your employees have hung on through the tough times, it’s a question you should consider now. If they stayed because they believe in the company’s mission and are committed to its future, you’ll be in great shape when the economy turns around. However, if your employees stayed because jobs were scarce and they didn’t have a choice, the toughest times may still be ahead of you. Those employees are merely biding their time and will be the first to leave when the economy rebounds and job opportunities become more plentiful.

Fortunately, the basic advice I’ve been offering in this column in recent months can help you prevent your strong performers from jumping ship. I recently read a blog entry by John Spence that boils it down to a simple formula:

T + C x ECF = Success

T = Talent. You must hire the best people, invest in developing their skills and provide opportunities for them to grow in the organization. Now is the time to evaluate your employees to make sure you have the people you need to grow your business when the economy rebounds. You should also evaluate your hiring, employee development and succession planning programs and fine tune them, if necessary. Top organizations routinely use personality assessments. Yes, there is science proving that certain personality traits are predictors of success for many, if not most positions. Top companies also carefully groom employees for all important positions through a rigorous succession planning process.  When they don’t plan for future management needs, the result is often poor performance or, at worst, a crisis.

C = Culture. You must create a compelling vision of the future and communicate a vision that engages employees and inspires them to give their best. You must create a culture of performance and accountability that fosters teamwork and recognizes accomplishments. Top companies routinely use employee engagement surveys to take the organization’s pulse. Now is the time to do that pulse check and identify problem areas to address before the economy recovers.

ECF = Extreme Customer Focus. Customers today have a pretty low level of tolerance for shoddy service. They don’t expect perfection, but the way your employees handle problems can make or break customer relationships. If you’re not talking with your customers regularly, start today. Ask them what you’re doing well and what they wish you would do better. Ask them what you could do that would be exceptional. You’ll identify opportunities for excellence and put your company on the track to world class service.

An Example

One of our clients was facing a significant slide in revenue. They had never used a consultant before and Bob, the president, was extremely leery of doing so. However, he recognized that he must act to deal with the crisis. He cut his own pay, cut the pay of some key but costly employees, laid off some relatively poor performers and brought his costs in line with revenues. In short, Bob took bold, definitive action to stem the bleeding. On our recommendation, he did not stop there.

Talent:  He did a careful talent review, including personality assessments of all management people, to verify his perspective of his people and to discover if he had any with hidden talent and interested in a larger leadership role. After careful deliberation, he chose a core group of people representing the various functions of his business to be significant players on his management team. While the team was not ideal, it was good enough to move forward. He also implemented a carefully developed recruiting process to find a couple of people to fill gaps where he had a real need.

Culture & Direction: Bob went through a quick but thorough planning process to develop preliminary vision, mission, objectives and action plans.  He shared this with his new team, got their feedback and made some modifications, then explained it to his employees, got more feedback and made more modifications. His “new” managers also created a simple plan for their area of responsibility and all plans were aligned over several meetings and then cascaded through the organization.  The effort to get everyone to embrace the vision paid big dividends and moved the company from a demoralized state to a sense of excitement. They no longer believed the company was dying, they believed they were building a future! Step by step, the management team created interlocking plans with performance metrics and engaged their employees in co-creating their future.

ECF=Extreme Customer Focus. In conjunction with his sales manager, Bob did a thoughtful review of their product lines and their customer base and began to meet actively with customers and potential customers to reinforce old relationships and build new ones. They asked what customers liked and did not like and sought clear feedback on how the company could do a better job and earn their business.

It is working. Customers and prospects have been impressed with the outreach and the sharpened focus. Employees are coming on board the new and evolving plan and feeling as though they have a future. Business is coming in faster than expected and employees are more engaged than ever in building the new and improved future.

How does your organization measure up in the T + C x ECF = Success formula? If you’ve had recent success in any of these areas, let me know and perhaps we can highlight your company in an upcoming column.