I saw on the news this morning that a gun store owner sent a thank you letter to President Obama. It seems that since Obama became President, sales of guns has been booming. With each dip in the stock market, customers stream into his store, worried that things will get so bad they may need to protect themselves.

This is a bit disturbing to me. I hope that businesses are not falling prey to panic. I think that those who can hold on, figure out how to survive, we be better after it is all over. Of course, some will not survive.

Whatever happens, I think our world and our country will be changed. It is not the kind of change our country was seeking, but it will have an impact for many years to come.

Regardless, companies will still have to do more with less and be lean mean profit making machines. The question is, Are you looking at your processes for ways you can cut costs and drive profits?

I ask this question because the statistics show that companies are woefully ignorant of their processes, with less than 10 percent of them even written down. As the technology experts argue over whether a process is a process, we waste time that could be better spent figuring out how businesses can do business better.

Things that managers relegate to the cost of doing business column need to be examined to find cost savings. Things cannot stay at the status quo. We all need to be innovative, and not just in new products and services, but how we develop, manufacture, deliver and support those products and services.

We may not want to admit it, but in the cost of doing business column there is a lot of pork. Its time to get lean.