Leadership During A Recession.

I read this fabulous article the other day from a May issue of Harvard Business Review. The author, Bill Taylor, is discussing recession leadership. Yes, you read that right. Leadership.
Right here, in the middle of the recession. How dare he be so reckless?

He simply draws the case that a down economy is a wonderful opportunity to "...try something different or start something new."

And in his article he refers to a column from James Suroweicki in the New Yorker. In the column, Suroweicki mentions the bold moves that companies made during trying economic times. During the Great Depression Kellogg's doubles its ad budget and pushes a new cereal, Rice Krispies. Texas Instruments introduces the transistor radio during the recession of 1954; Apple launches the iPod six weeks after September 11, 2001.

How many of you, me included, don't think this way? Aren't we supposed to hunker down and grind it out, withdraw our necks and heads back into our shells?

And isn't that just what everybody's doing? By that I mean - doing nothing. Nothing's happening, nobody's moving forward, pushing ideas, trying to heal what's broken. We're in a collective "waiting for the other shoe to drop" mentality. We're impotent. And we're killing ourselves with indecision or no decision at all.

The whole point? Taylor said it best: "...don't use the long shadow of the economic crisis as an excuse to downsize your dreams or stop taking chances. The challenge for leaders in every field is to emerge from turbulent times with closer connections to their customers, with more energy and creativity from their people, and with greater distance between them and their rivals."

How many of us, out there, are thinking and acting this way? Sadly, hardly anybody.

And, here we sit.