What did you do in the recession, Granddad?

I kicked off the new year by writing this:

Good morning and welcome to 2009. I'm sure you saw the same news coverage I saw over the holidays, most of it revolving around the worst holiday season for retailers in more than 30 years. Now the holidays are over, but the problems in the economy are not.

Never mind the retailers who are liquidating or filing Chapter 11. Take a look at Starbuck's ... the Gap ... Ann Taylor ... Talbot's ... Home Depot ... Office Depot ... Sears ... and Kmart. All of them have closed underperforming stores. Walgreens and Wal-mart, which have been opening hundreds of new stores each year, are putting the brakes on their expansion plans. Best Buy is cutting their capital spending in half ... and their CEO says the current economic climate is THE most challenging consumer environment his company has EVER faced. Not one of the most ... but the most. And one analyst says this recession will wipe out 5 to 10 percent of the retail stores now operating -- maybe more than that -- and we'll continue to feel the effect throughout 2009 and maybe into 2010. 

In this environment, what are our choices?

We can tighten up our operations. We can improve our levels of customer service. We can find ways to drive new business opportunities. And that's exactly what we're doing with the steps we're announcing today.

(Here we announce a restructuring and explain how it will work.)

I know I speak for the entire management team when I say we would have preferred a continuation of growing volumes and record earnings. But we know that good times don't last forever, and neither do hard times. And this management team is not exactly untested in meeting challenges brought to our doorsteps by external forces. Those challenges have come in many shapes and sizes: customer-driven, competitor-driven, technology-driven, and luck-of-the-draw-driven. So the only mystery for us is not whether we'll be challenged again, but what form it will take ... well, this time it is a Category Five recession. 

We are as prepared for this threat as any company can be. It finds us with a storehouse of financial strength. We have no debt. We have a good supply of cash on hand. We have positive cash flow. With your help, we will move decisively to extend our leadership position while the market is down ... and then profit from it when the market comes back.

Thank you for everything you do. Now let's go out there and win the recession. 

As soon as I finished that, I turned around and wrote this for another client:

In a world where all the news is about scarce resources and limited options ... that's not what we're about. At the highest levels of our corporation, we have options. We have resources. We have executive leadership and a board of directors that is thinking "more" and "better" and "sooner rather than later." And they're making decisions every day that boil down to investing in you, to give you what you need to succeed across your span of control.

Today I start on the chairman's letter of an annual report for a company that, at its low point of 2008, had lost nine-tenths of its market cap.