Many anxious executives and despairing investors are no doubt eager to see 2008 - one of the most tumultuous economic years of our lifetimes - enter the history books.
Yet, simply turning the calendar page will not undo the damage that was inflicted on businesses and investment portfolios. Corporate leaders are surely bracing themselves for severe challenges in 2009, looking to the lessons of economic history and the latest management science to help them navigate a prolonged period of uncertainty.
The future will belong to companies whose leaders assert a calm, calculating realism about business conditions, creating strategic options, making their organizations more resilient and responsive, and maintaining a forward-looking awareness of the changing competitive landscape.
That's one of the main conclusions in the forthcoming edition of The McKinsey Quarterly, in which a score of contributors provide management insights to executives striving for survival and success in this recession. The compendium weighs the steps that executives can take as they consider various potential macroeconomic scenarios for 2009 - the likeliest being a period of plodding underperformance.
"The future of capitalism is here, and it's not what any of us expected," say my colleagues Lowell Bryan and Diana Farrell.
Indeed, few analysts could have foreseen the dramatic breakdown of the financial markets last September and October, when the flow of credit was abruptly cut off - to use Mr. Bryan and Ms. Farrell's metaphor, severing the flow of electricity that powers society's economic activity.
Lenders didn't lend, borrowers couldn't borrow, consumers stopped buying and producers cut output. It will require more than simply flicking a light switch to restore the flow of goods and capital: Repairs are needed to the damaged global financial markets themselves.
After a long era of cheap and readily accessible credit, the economy has made what UCLA's professor Richard Rumelt has termed "a structural break with the past" - a "kickback from leverage" as the economy unwinds its past excesses.
That structural break has opened an era of uncertainty that is forcing businesses to recalibrate its expectations of profitability, growth, and potential returns.
What can business leaders do, as they try to manage their companies amid such uncertainty?
Thinking broadly about the full range of possible actions must be the first step: Considering an array of once-unimagined outcomes, executives must weigh a wider range of options to realign their operations, processes, product lines, and business portfolios as market conditions unfold.
They will need to gain a sharper awareness of their own and their competitors' positions in the marketplace, looking for fundamental shifts in their industry's structure, and be ready to spring into action as opportunities and risks emerge. Armed with better business intelligence, companies will be better prepared for faster, more effective decision making - especially in a crisis, when lead times disappear and executives must make quick decisions.
Executives should emphasize a more flexible, "just-in-time" approach to strategy-setting, risk-taking and resource allocation to allow for fast decisions, Mr. Bryan and Ms. Farrell contend. Such flexibility can be used defensively, if necessary, in an effort to keep an endangered company alive - or it can be deployed offensively, to make opportune moves to seize greater market share, acquire struggling companies, or seek new areas of competitive advantage.
Making organizational structures more resilient is especially timely, as businesses must react to unexpected circumstances.
Economic downturns offer companies a chance to break ingrained structures and habits that drain productivity, according to Mr. Bryan and Ms. Farrell, and prevent quicker decision making.
Redefining roles and redesigning accountabilities can force improved co-operation between functions, reduce duplication of effort, and improve performance.
Executives whose agendas were thrown off balance by the economy's sudden upheaval - and who now seek new insights on strategy, operations, organization, and performance optimization - will find a range of ideas in the forthcoming McKinsey Quarterly.
Mr. Bryan and Ms. Farrell's emphasis on flexibility, resilience, and awareness is joined by other analysts' insights on such priorities as spurring innovation, improving talent management, and anticipating public policy.
There are sure to be new leaders and laggards in the next stage of the business cycle, and executives who aim to position their companies for greater chances of survival - and perhaps even success - should be adding new options to their playbook.
As they turn their backs on a bleak year for business, executives who have thought through all their strategic and tactical options, and started to implement plans for a new future, can face 2009 with calm confidence of a more productive year ahead.
Jiri Maly is a principal in the Toronto office of McKinsey & Co.
