Here is your free printable version of Kraig’s MeasureUp Recession Tools.

And, please visit us at CEO Tools for more business and management tools and tips.

Amazingly, when you Google “recession” – three of the seven paid-for sponsors on the first page talk about the medical illness known as Clinical Depression and two talk about dentistry, not economic recession. Well, I guess that makes some sense, recessions and dental work can be very depressing! Another interesting observation: you get nearly 50 million hits when googling recession. And yet, not much to help us manage through it.

In our opinion, only the wikipedia website offers much, and that’s a pretty thorough history of recessions and the Great Depression. Good stuff, but it doesn’t help much to take action to survive and thrive in this recession.

Following are a few websites you might want to visit, but actually we got lucky here at CEO Tools Blog since we seem to be the only one on the first page or two when you Google “recession tools” that offers ongoing suggestions of real-time, concrete, free tools for businesses to manage and do better through recessions. Try these websites for some interesting input:

Great definition and history of recessions and the ‘30s Great Depression: Kraig Recommends Wikipedia on Recession

A few good ideas for dealing with recessions:  Kraig Recommends More Business on Recession

Great recession tools for non-profit organizations (actually, they’re not-for-taxation, but everyone knew that):  Kraig Recommends Not-for-Tax Website on Recession

There are others, but it’s like wading through mud – it’ll take you a while to find them! So please check in with us regularly since we’ll be posting new ideas, tips, and tools to do better with your business during this recession.

Merrill Lynch recently posted an economic commentary entitled “Revisiting the deflation theme” which contains some great ideas for recession readiness and response.  And, whether or not our economy deteriorates into deflation, your industry or your raw materials and products might, as for example what has happened to severely declining iron and steel prices in the past few months.

Sensible pro-actions include:  increase your liquidity (more cash, quicker collections, lower inventory, higher inventory turns) , reduce your leverage without compromising your cash position, work now to spread your debt service out further, turn fixed costs into variable through outsourcing and the like so that you can curtail the variable when necessary, focus on cost containment since top-line will be squeezed, and stay tuned for more tips and ideas!  Please email me at info@ceotools.com  and I’ll return-email the PDF to you, with thanks to Merrill Lynch.