I must be even slower than I thought at marketing. It dawned on me today that every email pitch for a webinar, seminar or program is suddenly adding something about “in troubled economic times” to the end of their usual program titles.

To wit: Talent Acquisition… in Troubled Economic Times” or “How Training Eliminates the Talent Gap… in T.E.T….” Get the idea? So I guess mine are “Effective Leadership… in T.E.T….” or “The Five Easy Skills for Success… in T.E.T….” (Repeating this so often on a page would probably not make Google happy, but apparently readers have an insatiable appetite for it.) This sounds suspiciously like “find the pain and offer to fix it…” plus our natural tendency to want to check every news or blog item that might have something intelligent to say about a situation that defies answers.

Personally I’m sitting on what I own and feel lucky I’m not so leveraged that I have to dump things at today’s loss prices. I’m not enough of a risk taker to go get a big loan and buy up what look like really good bargains at the moment, but I believe the market will come back… just no idea when.

The bottom line for leadership, though, is that we need to be better every day, rain or shine, good times or bad. It’s consistency that wins in the end, not temporary panic fixes. If we wait for “T.E.T.” to get serious about doing the right things, we’re missing a lot of boats along the way. Ah, human nature.