There are lots of views on the purpose of business – defining purpose has become an industry.  But for all businesses there are times, and for many businesses this is one of them, where purpose becomes reduced to a single word – “survive”.

If your business cannot survive then all the great purposes, the paybacks to stakeholders, the service to customers, the protection of the environment, will all be lost in a messy bankruptcy along with the jobs of your people and maybe of your suppliers.

Your know you are in survival mode when you can’t raise any more money, when the creditors are hammering at the door, when staff are leaving faster than you can recruit, and even your customers have stopped paying. 

Survival requires a single focus.  It means operating very far outside your comfort zone, often thinking and doing the unthinkable.  This is when you need the survival mindset.  We all have one, it’s a very old, very basic human instinct, you hear the rustle of the sabre-toothed tiger in the bushes and your body reacts.  There are two options – fight or flight. 

Not quite true in today's world, there is a third option, which is to decide that both fight and flight look too difficult, it’s a poor evolutionary choice but you see it in business all the time: “maybe we can negotiate our way out of this?”; “the market will turn if we just wait”; “the competition is bound to fail”; “but we are the market leader”.

A survival mindset is tactically adaptive, it’s about the future – it’s about the big changes not the little tweaks. Your first decision is between fighting for your future or fleeing to the bankruptcy court.  These are valid and (mostly) honourable choices. 

Decide very quickly which one is for your company and then execute fast and try to take care of your people, your pensioners, your small customers, small suppliers, and your small shareholders if you have them.  These are the people who will really suffer. Time is of the essence here, dithering will a turn you into lunch.

If you decide to fight the time pressures are the same. You have a very short time to produce a plan.  Not a financial model, at this stage they are a substitute for thinking.  Get your most creative people together - the old and the young, the experienced and the inexperienced, and start creating stories that describe how your company could morph into something that could survive and thrive and then make a believable plan to bootstrap your way into that.

Don't dismiss anything,  it may be nothing like what you do today, but it may be something that is possible and profitable given the skills and experience you have.  At this moment only the present and the near present matter.  Get through those and you may have a chance of a future.