Cut the cloth to fit the suit: tough times reward tough people.

• Author: Wiesner, Pat
• Position: [on] MANAGEMENT

It appears we are in for a long period of hard work before things get easier for business. Most of us have been in downturns before, but what's spooky about this time is that we are seeing some things for the first time.

Oil and therefore gas went through the roof then slid quickly down again while the stock market sets new records every day for either amount lost or amount gained. It is impossible to know exactly how things will work out.

But work out they will!

The second headline above (called a deck) is a paraphrase from a book written in 1984 by Robert H. Schuller. The recession of the early '80s was brutal. It was started in the '70s by an oil crisis and was then referred to as the biggest since the "Great Depression" of 1929 (sound familiar?). I had just bought a house in Evergreen and had a 19.5 percent mortgage. This was not the highest; some mortgages were more than 20 percent.

Yet it eventually faded, and we have had some great times in this country since. So how do we get through it now?

Another time, in the late '60s, after 10 years of hard work as a salesman, editor and sales manager, I finally became a publisher. I was on top of the world thinking that I had really arrived and that it would all be downhill and shady from here. Surprise! Another recession.

The world around me was crashing, and I didn't know what to do about it. I was a new manager with little experience, and the sky was falling. Here I was, a new manager, and sales were falling rapidly. I thought I was supposed to have the answer since I got the job because I was good at sales.

So I started spending lots of time with my new boss who I came to regard as the best manager I have ever had before or since. Basically his advice was, "Cut the cloth to fit the suit and then sew better than ever!"

It took me a while to parse that sentence but it meant:

Make a plan you can make happen. Don't promise anything to management that you can't deliver. Make a plan from the bottom up. That is, include all your people. Find out what they can realistically do in their jobs, in their territories, so that the composite is really doable. Being tough here means being realistic. Hold everyone accountable, including yourself. You will only get one chance to get it right. Remember that if you run out...