You see a lot of advice these days on how to survive the recession. Financially, the first order of the day – as always – is cash flow and that means, first and foremost, keeping your job. Investments are for later; working is for now. We need to eat.

To that end, I humbly put forward, for your consideration, five suggestions for surviving the cut. Admittedly, I am not alone in providing free advice. The First section of the December 8, 2008, issue of Fortune magazine, for example, also offered up five tips, four for keeping your job (though only three are useful) and one in case you don’t.

My credentials: I have lived through – and, indeed, helped organize – large scale layoffs. It is a troubling process – even for the most human with the best of intentions. It damages the soul, leaving scars that – in my case, at least – will never heal.

That said, I have learned things going through the process that are worth sharing. I have learned, for example, that there is a jockeying for resources. The number of cuts are usually fixed (by someone in Finance!), but the nature of the cuts is often up for debate and the specificity of the cuts, in most cases, comes down to the individual. The good news is that there are generalities that can be observed, generalities about who gets cut first, who, unbeknownst to them, balance ever-so-delicately on the bubble, and who survives without question. Even when whole departments are shut down, there are those plucked from the anonymity of the group. It is worth understanding why.

1.    Find a mentor. That is, find someone in a high place who likes you and who thinks what you do is valuable. Someone besides your boss. In the layoff planning sessions, lists of names will be bandied about. You want someone to say, “Woah! This name should not be on the list. If anything, I can find a place for him.” It will be costly. Names do not get removed from lists; they get substituted. So your benefactor will have to give up something to get something.

How do you find a benefactor?

2.    Get noticed. Most people think that lying low is the best strategy for survival. Keep your head down, they say. Never be the first one over the hill. This is incorrect. In my opinion, it is exactly the wrong strategy. Working hard, in itself, is not enough. Toiling in obscurity is not nearly enough. Starting early – like today – get involved in a high-visibility project. You have to bring something to it, of course. A specialty. A skill. One of the people I know who was designated for termination was a brilliant analyst who was always the first choice of every project team leader. Her value was widely known. She was simply in the wrong place – a department being eliminated – at the wrong time. The Finance department had no idea she was even on a list. When it became known she was to become a ‘free agent’, they happily reached out for her.

On the other hand…

3.    Avoid not-for-profit projects. Surprisingly, being a good citizen carries no weight. Working on the company’s United Way campaign, for example, pays zero dividends. Organizing the Christmas party…ditto. I have actually heard it said, to nodding faces, “Yes, she’s a fantastic person…always involved…but that has nothing to do with the business.” If you have to get involved in a project, make sure it is one that moves the business, not civilization, forward.

4.    Be self-sufficient. Don’t count on your boss to hold your hand; he has problems of his own. If he has to give you work, you are almost certainly expendable. If he has to help you get your work done, you are vulnerable. Faced with a down-sized department, your supervisor will look for a self-sufficient, self-starter whose hand he doesn’t have to hold.

5.    Do not be self-indulgent. Do not be a contrarian. These are tough times for everybody. They are about to get worse, so there will be plenty to complain about. The last thing your supervisor needs is a whiner. I had one employee who had too many principles for her own good. On several occasions, she considered suing the company for imagined wrongs. Everything down to the air she was breathing was subject to debate. Not surprisingly, so was the opportunity for advancement. When it came time to prepare ‘the list’, imagine whose name was near the top.

So there you have it: five things that will help save your job. Please note the word ‘help’. In a sweeping layoff that reaches triple and quadruple digits, even the best can be swept out to sea with the bathwater.

One more thing: these tips will be of service, cuts or no cuts. Right now, you have to think about your job but, remember, your career is just around the corner. So keep your head while looking ahead.

Good advice at any time.

Okay, so the principle of investing during a recession having been established (see: PIMS Points the Way Past the Recession), what did my former company do as it came face-to-face with an imploding economy. In fact, the company was heading straight into a perfect storm: it serves the construction industry which was already well into the downturn (in some regions, the downturn looked awfully like a drain and the sucking sound we heard was usually caused by falling prices); the exchange rate was working against exports but opening the market to cheaper imports; the company is a heavy purchaser of oil-based raw materials which until recently were at historic highs; meanwhile, other commodities it purchases heavily were being gobbled up by the Chinese; new technologies were being introduced by well-heeled competitors…the list of threats was long and forbidding.

Time to yank out the PIMS database. The marketing budget was not going down without a fight. In fact, I had little trouble convincing my colleagues of the need to keep investing in marketing and product development. To my surprise, we had even less trouble convincing the Board. The issue arose with our attempt to determine the extent of this investment.

I came up with a plan to focus expenditures on winning technologies, products, markets and even specific customers. My Power of One presentation explained why we should put all our money on leadership products, first movers, consolidators and core markets. I was successful on the principles of the thing, but not the details. My colleagues were all for focusing, but to most that meant keeping the pressure up on those areas and pulling back elsewhere. Which translated not into the reallocation of funds and resources but into cutting what had now become ‘non-strategic’ investments. Hmph…here I was, hoisted on my own petard!

Seeing the Big Picture

It was useful, however, to take a broader view of things. Pulling back on the marketing spend (as I would normally define it) was offset by pushing ahead in R&D and operating efficiencies. What is Marketing in fact? Arguably, the additional investment in R&D and operations covered two of the four Ps…maybe even three. In fact, the company was about to embark on the biggest capital program in its history.

So now the marketing exercise was to get the biggest bang for the buck being spent on the ‘focus’ items and find a way to keep the rest sailing along in their slipstreams.

Remember the last post? “In down times, consumers and businesses alike look to safe havens, familiar brands and dependable suppliers that focus on delivering consistent value.” While we kept plugging away at our key focus items, all items were ceremoniously dumped in the safe haven / familiar brand / dependable supplier basket. Public relations, customer service, complaint handling, loyalty programs…all those things that make customers comfortable with a brand were tightly managed with the safe/familiar/dependable relationship in mind.

The jury is still out on how, ultimately, this strategy will work. But the company is sticking to the plan and, in fact, has returned to the black well ahead of schedule. The future looks bright…even if, right now, that future feels very far away.

Note: Our best wishes for a speedy recovery to David St Lawrence over at Making Ripples. The long-time blogger, author, artisan, community activist, gentleman and friend recently suffered a heart attack. This obviously strikes close to home, given my history. Take care of yourself, dear reader, and pay heed when your body sends you signals that something is wrong.

“Market leaders market their way through a recession; all other companies try to save their way through a recession.” (Mike Ganey, Senior VP, ad agency Howard, Merrell)

These are tough times, to be sure, but they seem tougher because they are so oppressively omnipresent and so aggressively in your face. It seems that every time you turn around and everywhere you turn, you are confronted by bad news. A pall seems to have settled over the landscape, a pall that is pervasive and pernicious. There is no light apparent at the end of the endless tunnel that we have constructed in our minds.

But – trust me – this too shall pass. There will be a turn-around. It is an eventuality framed by a certainty.

True, you’ve got to survive the recession – or the depression, if you like, or the Second Great Depression, as some like, but when it is over – and it will be over – where and what will your company be?

Might I introduce, for your consideration, the PIMS experience. The PIMS (Profit Impact of Marketing Strategy) database, includes the real world business performance experiences of more than 3,000 businesses representing 16,000+ years of data. Originating at GE in the mid-sixties and further refined at the Harvard Business School, the PIMS database has been managed by the autonomous Strategic Planning Institute since 1975. The strategic data includes information on markets, competitors, quality, structure, environment and financial performance.

Its findings, endorsed by the Corporate Executive Board (I was, for a number of years, a member of the CEB Marketing Leadership Council), are illuminating:

• Marketing spend does not significantly damage return on capital employed (ROCE) during a recession;
• Companies curtailing their marketing spend damage their profitability when the economy recovers;
• Companies that increase marketing spend and that commit to product development during recessions reap the largest future rewards.

The supporting data applied to both B2C and B2B companies. It applied to companies equally in the U.S. and the U.K.

There are reasons for this:

• Brand building requires consistency. Companies can grow share by continuing to generate high levels of awareness, which ultimately translates into customer-perceived value or quality;
• R&D requires similar commitment. Technological advances don’t zig and zag in lockstep with economic cycles. Technology moves relentlessly forward.
• In down times, consumers and businesses alike look to safe havens, familiar brands and dependable suppliers that focus on delivering consistent value. Companies that pull back fall back. Companies that move ahead, stay ahead.

Nothing is ever that simple. But it is not that complicated either.