According to a November 2008 McKinsey study, 22% of over 1400 executives from a cross-section of industries, geographies, and functional areas anticipate that they will be seeking merger and acquisition opportunities. That is, those companies that are still in fairly good financial shape will take advantage of opportunities to purchase complimentary companies at a lower price than usual.

When times are tough, it is human nature to batten down the hatches. However, when business is reduced to just a set of metrics and numbers without consideration to the human side of business, growth and productivity are unintentionally squelched. Several years ago some colleagues and I were making a sales pitch to the CEO of a large chemical manufacturing company set to make major large-scale change. We argued that there was a need to manage the human side of the change in order to get the desired return on investment. The CEO remarked that his employees would just have to "get over it." Fortunately, we were able to persuade the CEO and CFO that they could not afford to be distracted by employees who were not on board and aligned with the desired changes.