Some of you are already backsliding! The recent sales upswing has caused you to lose focus on the changes you made to right your dealership’s course in the midst of the downturn. You’re getting sloppy with procedures and budgets, loose with accountability and careless with inventory!

Tragically, winning a couple of business battles can cause a relapse of complacency that costs you the war. This is because we tend to forget lessons learned during crises once the imminent danger and survival threat has disappeared. In addition, the natural sense of optimism most leaders demonstrate prompts them to play best-case scenario too early, too often following a downturn. It’s like recovering from a heart attack: after a period of intense exercise and diet, you’re back to donuts, Dominos and the Discovery Channel.

How long your team stays focused on the disciplines, procedures and cost-controls you implemented during the economic meltdown depends largely on your own commitment to the changes you’ve made. Following are five sample areas where you may have gotten personally off track.  Look objectively at this list of offenses to discover where you need to correct your course.

You may be backsliding personally if…
1. You find yourself drifting back to spending more time in your office than with your team. 

2. You’re moving too quickly to increase advertising, inventory and head count.

3. You’ve started canceling or rescheduling the vital meetings that got you back on track during the tough times.

4. You’ve already reinstated the compensation sacrifices you made personally or asked partners to make.

5. You’ve shifted too much attention to what your competitors are doing rather than continuing to refine and upgrade your own internal processes, procedures and personnel.

If you’ve backslid into any of these traps, adjust your course now! You’ve worked hard the past many months to narrow your focus, tighten your disciplines and develop new and productive habits. You are probably far closer to where you’ve always wanted to be as a leader than before the recession hit. Don’t give back the ground you gained!

Now that you’ve examined a handful of personal leadership issues, move on to evaluate the following people issues.

You may be backsliding on people issues if…
1. You’re back to hiring fast and recklessly. Recruiting is reactive rather than proactive and your interviews focus more on past experience than past accomplishments.

2. Your team has lost its intensity. TOs are sporadic, follow-up is lethargic and no one is asking for referrals. Paperwork is careless and incomplete and employees are not paying attention to the basics that the downturn required. In addition, everyone has become dependent on external stimuli like Cash for Clunkers for momentum and, as a result, they spend their time waiting for sales rather than creating sales.

3. Training is sloppy and inconsistent. Meetings are canceled and attendance is down as excuses abound for being absent.

4. One-on-ones with your team members are inconsistent. You don’t schedule them and make excuses for why you no longer have time for them.

5. Accountability has weakened. Your looser management style has resulted in cloudy expectations and few, if any, consequences for failing to execute disciplines that were considered as non-negotiable in the spring and early summer.

If any of these five scenarios are representative of what is going on in your dealership, then roll up this magazine, hand it to the person next to you and ask them to whack you in the head! From 2008 and through this point in 2009, you undoubtedly made great strides forward in these five areas. Don’t lose your grip on the higher performance culture you created because it will take several times the energy and effort to rebuild these areas as it will to sustain them!

Let me conclude by encouraging you to examine four potential areas for organizational backsliding that you must correct if off track.

You may be backsliding organizationally if…
1. Spiffs and bonuses are back to being welfare-based. Entitlement has crept back in as people expect it for showing up versus stepping up!

2. You’re not continuing to cut and control variable costs.

3. You’ve jumped back into the expensive and low return practice of ego or image advertising.

4. You have lost your urgency to take care of customer problems. In difficult times the tendency is to bend over backward to make a customer happy, whereas robust periods create the attitude that an unhappy customer is more expendable and easy to replace.
 
Many of you have before you the opportunity of a lifetime. As a result of financial and economic pressure, you have made tough decisions, implemented stronger controls, reined in foolish spending, developed unparalleled urgency, right-sized your organization, pruned the dead wood, developed healthy business habits and have become more engaged in your enterprise than ever before. Steering your momentum in these arenas will be far easier than restarting it. Frankly, with all you’ve been through, you can’t afford to allow the healthy foundation you’ve established to erode! Shame on you if your gains regress under your watch!

Coming out of the recession, many business leaders have boasted of how they reinvented themselves and made comebacks in the midst of economic disaster. Yet, there is a higher calling to aspire toward in business than bringing about miraculous recoveries, and that is to stop getting sick in the first place! Yes, the economy’s meltdown contributed to the hardships we all faced, but by failing during the good times to have adequately addressed issues like the 14 I’ve listed, you allowed the recession to turn what could have been a common cold into double pneumonia! During the record years, some of you were so busy boasting, coasting and toasting success that the downturn nearly transformed your comfort zone into a casket! The lesson: it’s better to build a fence at the top of the mountain than a hospital at the bottom. Your “fence” is the new structure, urgency, disciplines and commitments you’ve made to strengthen your dealership and prevent future falls from atop Mt. Complacency.

I am hopeful about where the economy is headed. I believe the worst is behind us. However, we’re not out of the woods yet. A huge national debt and escalating oil prices continue to threaten us with economic relapse. Dictators in Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea, along with the egomaniac running Russia pose a persistent threat to international stability, peace and market health. As the economic crisis fades you can also expect to see greater disunity in Congress and lower approval ratings for the president. This “Barack-lash,” will make it tougher to move forward on issues vital to continued economic recovery. The takeaway: don’t get cocky, sloppy or complacent! Remain humble, diligent, disciplined and focused. Continue to upgrade your own skills and develop a stronger team around you. Create a cult of loyal customers that help bulletproof your organization against future economic declines. Spend more time building long-term vitality into your organization and leave the continual come-from-behind rallies to your clumsy, clueless and confused competitors.

Dave Anderson is president of LearnToLead, a sales and management training organization. He is the author of 10 books, including, "How to Run Your Business by THE BOOK: A Biblical Blueprint to Bless Your Business." Dave has spoken at the NADA Convention for the past 10 years and is a panelist on MSNBC's Your Business.