Surviving and Growing During an Economic Downturn

I may be revealing my age but I have seen several recessions. The smartest response that I have ever seen during tough times was that of a CEO of a 26+ billion dollar company. During the last downturn (the dot com crash), he directed his company to focus their efforts on gaining market share, improving quality, and "lean-ing" its operations (reducing costs and improving efficiency). While layoffs were impossible to avoid, he committed himself to finding ways to increase efficiency, improve the quality of products/services, avoid/minimize lay-offs, and build staff loyalty. His vision was to be more competitive, agile, and lean so the company could rapidly grow and gain even more market share. This strategy worked very well. When the economy turned, the company doubled its revenue.