In most industries, business slows when the economy slows. Budgets becoming tighter (or non existent), departments become leaner, and spending is pulled back. It’s a natural reaction caused by fear in the market. As this cycle perpetuates, things get worse until signs of hope begin to emerge and companies loosen their belts.

There are many challenges we all face in a down economy, the most important of which is how to stay in business. Above and beyond keeping the doors open, we are faced with the challenge of how to actually thrive in a slow economy. It’s not always simple and the answer definitely varies based on your situation, your industry, and your team. But from our experience as an interactive agency in the Web design and development space, there is a common thread that has helped us maintain an edge. Flexibility.

We’re talking about flexibility across the board, and maybe most importantly, in your mindset. Flexibility gives you many options; it gives you the chance to be lean or hire, ramp up or down, move quick or slow, work differently, and be open to relationships you might not normally consider. For us, this has meant providing the same level of quality and dedication to our projects that we always do, but if a project doesn’t fit within our “typical project requirements” we have learned to be flexible and discuss alternatives and options with the client. This may mean extending the timeline to account for the smaller budget, or working with smaller teams. There’s a lot of changes we’ve been making to how we normally work, and it’s been very beneficial to both our clients and our agency.

Overall, we’ve been thriving in a slower economy by doing the following:

• Being flexible and adjusting costs, processes, and guidelines to work with clients in various situations
• Using extra time that isn’t spent on client work to pursue additional business ventures, ideas, and projects that will propel us in the future
• Working additional hours on projects (in some cases with smaller budgets) to ensure the highest quality product; quality over quantity
• Learning new skills and further developing existing ones (for instance, we’ve been thoroughly expanding our jQuery expertise)
• Expanding, not contracting (which is a common reaction to the market), sales and advertising; act, don’t re-act

While the economy is changing, being flexible and open to change will give you the opportunity to not only stay in business, but to be successful in tough times. It is working for us, and we believe it can work for you.