This is the time to seek out and rally around the best people within your organization. Heroes in times of boom, and in times of bust are most often different, and a clear identification in this regard can mean the difference between survival and success.

Rally around your customers — understand their needs as much or more than they understand them. Helping them now — working with them in tough times assures you of their business — if not in the short-term, then at some time in the future.

Take a focused approach driven by an honest assessment of what you do best, and sticking to it. This is not the time to do anything new by putting survivability at stake.

Take small but sure steps, one at a time — most importantly about matters that relate directly to the bottom line. Build your Rome — but one step at a time — breaking the process down into manageable steps that directly add to the benefits as well.

There is absolutely no limit to the efficiencies that can be achieved with organizations, especially by savvy use of technology, which as we all know is cheap today. Deploy smart technology incrementally to reach outstanding operational efficiency.

A lot of slack gets built up in companies during boom times — as the focus is on expansion and bringing in new business. Now is the time to clean up that slack. Deeply tied to this are habits that drive towards maintaining status quo and a forced belief that everything under the hood is OK! But you wouldn’t really know until you pop it open, get your hands dirty, and pry around looking for rust, grime, wear and tear, as well as hidden treasures that could become unlikely assets now. On top of this, remember that old habits die hard! So you must keenly monitor everything all the time to make sure that the organizational change being created is followed up effectively.

The seventh and highest common denominator is one about which the less said, the better: Common sense. Good luck with acquiring this one!

What goes down must come up as well. And this is the time to be out there, to be ready when the tide turns. And we at siliconindia are here to help you do that in any which way. Just as in this issue, we are absorbed in presenting to you in-depth ideas, strategies and processes that are working. And we invite you to engage in useful, healthy dialogues with us, and see how we can work through this together. Let the fruits of this experience last a long time.

Yogesh Sharma, Editor

Write to:yogesh@corp.siliconindia.com