President-elect Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, recently observed, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." 
 
Conservative economist Milton Friedman was also a proponent of this view, stating, "Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around."
 
As the ripples from the financial crisis throw many of our organizations into their own crises, this is a time of true opportunity for the cool-headed among us to make our organizations work better - now and in the long-term.
 
How?  Below are some of the ideas that we currently have "lying around." Some may help you move your organization onto a new, more solid, path:
 
1. Globalization has left only one sustainable route to profitability for firms operating in high-wage nations: basing their competitive advantage on exceptional human capital management (HCM).

2. The turmoil in financial markets underscores the need for organizations to focus their attention on things they CAN directly affect and control (unlike, say, the organization's stock valuation).  While the storm blows outside, stay productive by focusing your attention inside.

3. Combined, the two preceding items suggest that most organizations should consider a new, intense focus on improving the management of their people. 

4. How to improve HCM?  First, you should accept that the people side of your business is too important to run by gut and intuition alone.  Then explore the new decision science that is beginning to emerge around HCM.
 
Human capital analytics is an important (and too often missing) core competence that most organizations urgently need to develop - both to manage through this crisis and to survive and prosper beyond it.