Stop blaming the economy and start looking at your offerings. Are they appealing? Are you creating "must have" products and services? Are you providing consistent service? Are people invested in your product or service? Or have they moved over to you because you are the cheapest guy in town?

Improving your people
Companies used the excuse that there was no time to invest in performance improvement programs when the economy was humming. Now many of these companies have nothing but time on their hands. Would this have been the case if they had provided training for their leaders on how to effectively manage through periods of change?

These organizations can emerge from this recession even stronger than where they were before the decline. How? By preparing their organization for the recovery. This means investing in the training and development of managers and those individual contributors who are on the front lines with customers.

It certainly is a heck of a lot easier to blame the economy for the decline in your business. But by doing so, you will miss out on the opportunity to build an organization that can sustain itself and thrive in any economic climate.

Roberta Chinsky Matuson is the President of Human Resource Solutions (www.yourhrexperts.com) and has been helping companies align their people assets with their business goals. She is considered an expert in generational workforce issues. Roberta publishes a monthly newsletter "HR Matters" which is jammed with resources, articles and tips to help companies navigate through sticky and complicated HR workforce issues. Click here to read her new blog on Generation Integration. She can be reached at 413-582-1840 or Roberta@yourhrexperts.com.