When a person has a traumatic event happen in their life there are six stages they go through:  shock – denial – anger – blame – depression – acceptance.  These six stages could also be applied to what most business people have gone through during this recession.

But there are three other stages that need to be added to this list due to all the business trauma that has been created due to the recession.  Here they are:  survival – stability – profitability.

The first stage that takes place during these tough business times is survival.  It’s important that the CEO, president or business owner get in action fast to evaluate their business situation as quickly as possible to survive.  It may mean laying people off, reducing inventory, personally infusing cash into the business and whatever else is legal and ethical to keep the business going.

Once we get through survival, we move on to stability.  This is where we reach a plateau as business has not yet returned to normal but we know the business will survive and we actually see some progress made.

In order to get to the third stage of profitability, the CEO, president or business owner has had to make radical changes in their business thinking and business operations as they moved through stage one, survival, and stage two, stability.

As the economy slowly improves; and as the efficiency and the sales efforts of the business improves, the company will then return to a more normal, every day business flow.

Although we would all like to skip these individual steps and move immediately to profitability, it’s necessary to go through all three steps to have a successful business in these challenging economic times.