I recently had the opportunity to have lunch with the president of one of our clients. The largest portion of this client’s customer base is located in the automotive industry; so, needless to say, the past year’s economic storm has had a negative financial impact on his company. However, very early into our conversation, I was struck by the positive and upbeat nature of his outlook for 2010.  Far from lamenting the lost sales and many cancelled orders in 2009, he was enthusiastic about the current opportunities facing the company. With genuine excitement, he shared with me that the altered landscape of their industry has put them in an optimal position to capture market share from their competitors. The reason their competitors have been weakened over the course of the year.

He proceeded to give me an overview of the new customers that they had been able to meet, which in normal circumstances would have been impossible due to long established supplier relationships. He credited the journey of sustained improvements begun two years prior that eliminated considerable operational wastes for these new business opportunities. As a result of confidence in front-line personnel that builds a culture of performance, the company has become vastly more competitive versus others in their industry. He even shared their plans to introduce new product lines into the marketplace and how their competition had nothing remotely as innovative on the horizon. He concluded our lunch with the statement that this year’s economic struggles were going to be one of the best things that ever happened to them.

Upon reflection of this discussion, I realized why this president was able to be so enthusiastic amidst the current economic malaise. It occurred to me that he, as the leader, is able to work “on” growing his business rather than “in” running his business. More importantly, he has not allowed the current market conditions to pull him deeper into the daily aspects of running the business. Rather as the leader he is able to dedicate his time towards growth initiatives that are currently yielding dividends for the company’s bottom-line.

In his best selling book, Leading Change, John Kotter’s first step demanded that leaders establish a sense of urgency for their organization. As our client pointed out over our sandwiches, if this economy is not creating a sense of urgency for you, then you must be dead. This successful leader reminds us to keep driving change to realize critical operational improvements.  Improvements that enable our companies to remain competitive while freeing management from daily oversight, allows them the time to implement growth strategies. Our client continues to adequately empower the employees to make the business operationally execute better, rather than simply maintaining the current status quo. This is due to his confidence, as the president of the company, in the people and systems, as validated through measurable outcomes. How many of us see the current, or any economic crisis for that matter, as an opportunity to generate the internal urgency to drive the necessary operational improvements in our companies?

Our client had already been working to establish a culture of continuous improvement throughout the organization long before the current economic downswing. He and his management team had worked hard to have the right people focusing on the right things for their business. They have thrived by maintaining management’s focus on their growth strategy, by communicating their performance expectations to the entire organization, engaging front-line employees to improve the operations without management’s daily oversight and properly rewarding their collective success. The business climate of this past year gave our client the opportunity to leverage the higher operational productivity that began years earlier.

The challenge that remains for business executives is to spend the majority of their time working “on” their business and not “in” it each day. It is never too late to begin the process of having the ability of management to primarily focus their efforts on growing the company. Do not wait for the storm clouds to completely clear in a couple of years – start today to achieve savings and confidence in your operations, thereby enabling you as the leader to focus on your company’s long-term growth.