That is the trillion-dollar question many of us are asking now. While most agree that the recession is indeed over, managing the recovery may require skillful maneuvering. Here are some tips to help small- and medium-sized business managers not only survive but thrive during this transitionary period.

Reach out to your customers. Many are still shell-shocked and, as such, are fearful of spending. Let them know that your products/services are better than before and that they will need them now more than ever. Most important, ease them back into purchases. Offer to let them try out one new item before selling them the entire catalog.

Continue to manage your spending. Many of us have been in lockdown mode this past year when it comes to expenses. While it still makes sense to be mindful of the company budget, it may be time to ease up on the purse strings a bit. In a thriving economy, you need to spend money to make money. While we are not quite there yet, it might be time to test the waters by spending on some company needs (vs. company wants).

Seek out new opportunities. Some of the best businesses have been created during the worst times. Take advantage of the emerging new economy to see what more your company can offer. Consumers and businesses will have changed in the aftermath of the recession and change often leads to opportunity.

Reward loyalty. Your employees have stood by you and your company during the recession and many have endured setbacks including lost wages and benefits. Show them you appreciate their sacrifice. While it’s probably too soon to dish out Wall Street-type bonuses, a gift card or luncheon can go a long way.

Learn to hedge. Many of us lost sight of this in the years preceding the recession. We overborrowed and overspent. While the recession may be over, it can easily reemerge. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. Make sure your company maintains sufficient liquid reserves such that no matter what happens, now or in the future, it will survive.

The key to business success is relationships – relationships with your employees so they will do good work and provide ideas, relationships with your customers so they will be loyal and tell you how to get better. Therefore, the best thing to do as the recovery takes hold is to do whatever necessary to repair important relationships that were harmed by actions you may have taken during the economic crisis that you thought were necessary to survive.

One way to repair relationships is to apologize.

Research in consumer behavior shows that when businesses admit mistakes and problems, apologize, and provide some credible indication of what steps they have taken so the problem doesn’t recur, customers are quite forgiving. Employees, too, understand the economic stress companies have faced. They also can by won back by heartfelt expressions of sympathy and concern and concrete actions to show that the relationship matters. Figure out who matters, and be sure they are still with you – customers, suppliers, creditors, employees – and, if not, win them back.

Businesses are starting to get busier and before too long, we will find ourselves out the recession. There are many employees out there that have been waiting patiently for new jobs and opportunities to become more widely available. Managers have enjoyed record setting retention levels over the last 18 months and some have mistakenly taken this for granted.

First, reflect back to what you learned during the recession so that those lessons are embedded in going forward.  We have seen companies learn “organization" lessons in three areas.

Culture:  we learned how to be bold, fast, and decisive.  Keep that culture going.

Communication:  we learned how to be more transparent, open, and candid.  Keep the communication lines open with all employees.

Customer: we learned how to serve and target key customers.  Keep personalizing the customer experience.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, do not waste it by making sure that what you learned gets embedded.

Second, plan on going forward to fully differentiate yourself.  Make your culture an outside/in activity.  Begin your culture change with your customer expectations and your firm brand.  Know what it is you want to be known for by your best customers and translate that expectation into leadership and management actions.

Then, be very attentive to talent.  Make sure that your employees are not only able and willing to do the work, but find meaning in the work.  One of the great risks coming out of recession is that the gratitude attitude among employees will create a false positive.  Employee retention and survey scores may be artificially high because employees are grateful to have a job.  But, memories are longer then recessions and if you treated employees badly durin ghte recession, they may leave coming out.  Work to help employees find meaning in the work that they do so hat they will be not only competent and committed, but contributing fully.

As the economy continues to recover, the market for talent is only going to get hotter. Hiring freezes are going to be lifted, and companies who may have shed talent over the course of the downturn are going to start hiring again.

When a downturn becomes an upturn, some of your best and brightest may see an opening to move on to the next big opportunity. Don’t give them the excuse to entertain that opportunity.

There are a number of different ways to do this, and not all of them can work for every situation. Some companies will want to consider restructuring roles to help individuals grow and give them new experiences. Others will want to give people opportunities for individual development, either through specific conferences or courses. Some will give people access to Board members, either at a Board meeting through a presentation they’ve asked them to prepare, or an invitation to the Board dinner the night before the Board meeting.

And, yes, there’s always special off-cycle awards of equity that only vest after a period of time, a little something extra to align interests with those of shareholders, and give them more reasons to invest in – and stick with – the organization. The point is to make it personal – and to do it soon. Doing this does take some creativity and thought, but it’s not intended for everyone. We’re not talking about your broad-based population here. This really should be focused on that handful of people that the company has identified as those future (or current) leaders that you need to hold onto.

The market may rebound, and the products may start flying off the shelves again in the near-term. But without your best people in tow. Your long-term outlook may be at risk.

Being an information security guy and seeing what SMBs are up against in this area, I recommend that managers set aside some time and money to find where their information systems are at risk. Be it their Web application, laptop computers and BlackBerrys, or internal network access controls (passwords and file permissions), I can say with near 100% certainty that weaknesses are there waiting to be exploited by an external attacker or malicious insider. Once it's determined where the business risks are, you can then put reasonable technical controls, processes, and documentation in place to help minimize the chances of something going awry.

Like the Chinese proverb says "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now." So now's a good time to do this before things get busier and the business expands. Because with each of these comes information security and compliance complexities that'll only continue to grow. I have several clients who thought about security when they were small and they have a much better grasp of things than larger organizations that have to start from scratch once the business is more mature.

Last week I was speaking with the CEO of an insurance company and asked him what's been keeping him awake at night. His response was that he recently realized that he'd spent the past ten months in a fetal position. "Almost everyone, "he said, "including me, was shocked by the precipitous drop in the economy and moved into survival mode," adding, "but I've realized that survival mode isn't going to cut it."

While most of us have been in survival mode the past year conserving and stockpiling cash, cutting expenses, reducing head count and delaying capital expenditures there's a small group among us who realized that the US economy has withstood sixty economic contractions, recessions and depressions since record keeping began in 1796 and that each has been  followed by a robust expansion. Instead of debating whether the recovery will be a W, V or L,  business leaders should simply realize that there will be a recovery and be ready for it. For some companies who have been in survival mode it's going to be tough to get going again because of smarter competitors who used this brief breather getting prepared for the inevitable surge in economic activity and who've been plotting how to gain market share from competitors who have been hiding underneath the bedcovers.

Here are the four things that must be addressed before authentic growth takes place:

1. Does every individual in the company know and buy into the organization's single BIG objective? If people don't know what the organization is trying to achieve they won't have any emotional connectivity. Recent Gallup polls prove that as many as 72% of US workers admit to just 'showing up."

2. Does every individual in the company know the firm's strategy and their role in it? Secret strategies are stupid because workers don’t know why they're doing what they're being asked to do, there's zero accountability and corners get cut and illegal stuff frequently happens. The strategy should be transparent and out there for everyone (workers, customers, vendors and shareholders) to know.

3. Is there a set of guiding principles in place - known and understood by everyone - so that right decisions can be quickly made? Most organizations waste valuable time in self-important, time consuming discussions. Again, this is dumb. When you have a set of guiding principles for making decisions they get made with the snap of the fingers!

4. Does every individual in the organization understand how what they do creates economic value and how to measure it? Unless people know how what they do creates economic value there's no scoring and without scoring there's no emotional or fair financial pay-off. Imagine going to a basketball game where no score was kept. Boring!

If a leader makes certain that the preceding four things have happened they will realize explosive growth. If they fail to take heed, it'll simply be more of the same old-same old. Yawn.

You should be rebuilding the quality of your team,and using the time to augment team skills, build team unity and develop a more significant culture that connects to its employees and customers to hunt for opportunities. Here is why:

1, There is indeed a great supply of unemployed talent - there is no reason why you do not have the best in your organization.

2. Today's workplace must do more with less, requiring that each employee be hired into the right role. Now, you have choices you have not had before. Learn to hire for talents, fit and strengths. Focus on defining, sourcing and developing the right people.

3. Your people are your profits - they are the source of your innovation, efficiency, connection to customers and competitiveness.You must use the time you have to build a cohesive, interactive, high performance and connected workplace culture.

4. You must get close to your customers and closer to your employees. These people are the eyes and ears to the world - they keep you informed, tell you their ideas to improve and new things you should be doing. A culture that is focused on each commits the extra effort to build the rapport with each to encourage them to share what they know and think. Connecting to employees and customers is a daily event.

5. You must help your employees love what they do. Studies show that the emotional connection between employees and their work is what creates the best performance. Start job sculpting - customizing components of each employees' job to include things that appeal to them emotionally and will create a business impact. Help them love what they do.

6. There will be a significant employee exodus as the economy improves as many organizations took advantage of their employees instead of respecting, valuing and appreciating them. Today, find a reason to celebrate the work of your employees. Make appreciation a hallmark of your culture.

7. Require all employees to be on the "hunt for opportunities." Develop a culture of optimism - see all events as opportunities to improve efficiency, quality, profitability or customer loyalty. Require employees to be part of discussions to improve. Hold employees accountable to generate ideas, solve problems and start to see opportunities for the business.

Good days or bad days, successful companies are always connecting to their employees and customers. While others are cutting expenses and eroding the performance power of their teams, build yours up. Get the right people. Build the right culture. Empower them and make them accountable for finding value opportunities. This way, when the economy improves, your team will already be well ahead of the chaos that will ensue.