Oct. 30--The economic downturn has had many worried about their employment status, but for William Finnie this has been fertile ground for business.

Finnie established his consulting firm, Finnie Group, in 1991 with the vision of providing advice to businesses on how to refine their recession strategies.

Finnie's five-step approach has helped more than 90 businesses, such as Archway Sales, Solutia, Unico, and most recently, Zoltek.

Finnie spent 31 years as a part-time strategic planning professor at Washington University along with being the director of strategic planning at the St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch for six years. But he says he looks beyond beer and MBAs.

What is the major difference between this recession and economic troubles in 2001-2002?

This recession is driven by financial institutions, and they tend to be longer and deeper because if you have a demand recession, you do not have to change anything. When it comes to financial institutions you have to change a lot of things, and that is possible with political sensibilities along with economic sophistication.

What is the first step toward growth according to your strategic planning strategy?

My focus is on what the businesspeople should do in this recession. The first step is to recognize the changes and understand that it is possible to make major changes during recession. Ordinarily people hate changes, not only in smaller positions, but also at the senior level. This (recession) is the opportunity for the senior level people to make changes, which they should have made in 2002 and 2006 but didn't because it was difficult.

People are willing to make changes, especially if they know what is in it for them.

For example, one of my clients, Archway Sales, was doing OK in 2003. But they wanted to accelerate their (performance). They developed a vision of increasing the bonus pool for employees. That got everybody to focus hard and (it increased sales and profits).

How can small-business operations benefit from your consulting?

I work with all sizes of organizations. Some are multibillion-dollar companies; others are between $5 million to $10 million.

The big companies are involved in multiple businesses. All companies should identify their strengths as it is time to face brutal realities. On an average, GDP has already fallen 8 percent below the trend level. Develop the worst case scenario -- our growth is a percent and half down from the 3 percent growth we had before. If your sales are down and if you had been growing 10 percent, assume your sales are growing at 5 percent.

What kind of cost-cutting do you recommend for companies in dire situations?

The next step is to cut costs a lot in a way that it won't hurt sales. The way to do this is based on a Bain & Co. study. The survey found that reducing complexity cuts costs by 10 to 35 percent while increasing revenues by 5 to 40 percent.

Once you cut your complexities, you do zero-base budgeting for every department. Do we really need all these people? You can warn the departments that we are eliminating people six months before.

Once you downsize the number of people and the complexity of your organization structure, then it is easier to implement management theories. Also, overhead costs can be cut 20 to 30 percent.

How recession-proof is your job?

Consulting is sensitive to the economy. I took a 85 percent reduction when I left Anheuser-Busch in 1991. I love what I do; this is what I am passionate about. I have stock options and the brewery paid me enough. But, consulting is not totally recession-proof.

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