What to do while you wait for buyers to buy again ...

... honestly, it may take a while.

As I walked into a doctor's clinic in Singapore and joined the long queue of patients waiting outside, I glanced up at a tacky poster on the wall with the words PATIENCE printed in bold over a grim picture of man waiting, alone, at a deserted train station. Below it was some really sage advice .... "The key to patience is doing something else in the meantime".

As I meet clients around the world, I can't help but notice the increasing sense of restlessness and frustration building up in companies and individuals. A frustration born out of waiting ... for the buyer. Retailers are waiting for consumers to arrive, investment firms for deals to be made, and service firms for the phone to ring. And the wait keeps getting longer and harder each day.

The problem is, its going to be a really, really long wait. So, first things first, we need to stop holding our breath. Once we start breathing again and reset our expectations of a "quick return to normalcy", we will find ourselves empowered to act. I am advising clients to split their 'to do lists' into 2 parts - one for the 'DIP' and another for the 'RECOVERY'. That way you avoid confusing between short term belt tightening actions and longer term renewal actions.

Steve Balmer recently said (and I paraphrase) - "every time the economy tanks like this, we are not going to see the same reality bounce back at us, we are simply going to reset to a new reality". This is true whether you are running a corner shop or a billion dollar business. We will see a new reality emerge in 4-6 quarters from now.

Till then, we will all have to go through the 'DIP'. Depending on your company's view on how long your 'DIP' is going to last, you need a to-do list for this period. I call it the 'DIP' agenda. A typical 'DIP' agenda could look like this:

- Maintain a cash balance of 3-4 months' cash flow on our balance sheet at all times
- Reduce capacity by 10% over the next 100 days. Review capacity levels every month
- Pull out all stops to secure loyalty of top 50 customers. Meet them every week.
- Craft and launch 2-3 new revenue streams utilizing existing capabilities in this period
- Talk to employees every Monday and appraise them of actions we are taking
- Enroll top 50 managers into the DIP plan and re-align their incentives to DIP plan outcomes
- Train and develop top 15 leaders to communicate, motivate and lead through the DIP
- Retrain and redeploy key staff to short term revenue generating challenges
- Identify load-bearing walls in the cash equation (inventory, pricing, overhead expenses, etc.)
- Plan for and assign champions to each load-bearing wall
- Reduce investments in new initiatives to only the top 3 critical ones for the future. Review all new investments with a clear 'house view' on criteria to evaluate and fund for the future.

Once you have the DIP agenda in place, you might want to gather the 'best team' you can pull together to execute this agenda over the DIP period. Make sure the team understands the criticality of this period and is competent to execute. If you need to hire specific capabilities for the short-term, try options like interim experts and free lance consultants / experts.

While it is critical to know what to do during the DIP, make sure the RECOVERY agenda is available as well. You may not execute this agenda for the next couple of quarters, but you team needs to know how you plan to win in the new world. A typical RECOVERY agenda can look like this.

- Form a collective view (top 15 leaders) of the new landscape - customer, regulation, competition, funding and talent (among other factors)
- Enroll key customers in building the new proposition (products, pricing, positioning etc.)
- Re-orient the entire product portfolio to the new proposition
- Redefine the business model for future growth. Ensure new assumptions on margins, asset turnover and leverage (among other indicators).
- Craft a new incentive program to shift mindset of managers from DIP to RECOVERY
- Fuel innovation before the market hits bottom. Insert gates into the innovation and innovation funding process that open / close based on market demand conditions
- Review and change the decision making framework for managers - while one needs to centralize all decision making in the DIP, one also needs to let go before the RECOVERY
- Craft a separate agenda for opportunistic actions (acquisitions, team hiring, spin offs, etc.) to take advantage of emerging opportunities during the RECOVERY
- Set in motion an aggressive 'renovation' plan to build the key capabilities required for RECOVERY. Include staff training, brand building, organization sustainability etc. in the plan.

These are just a couple of examples of clients actually using the downtime to re-shape their destiny as an organization. Without these 2 lists and a strong leadership commitment to working hard on the agenda, our only strategy is to hope and pray for lady luck to arrive.

And, as Tiger Woods says, the harder you work at something, the luckier you'll get.