Taking tough decisions, keeping a clear focus and building a consensus can help firms make the most of their opportunities, writes Laurie Young.

In the middle of a meeting during one of the former recessions, I realised that we had reached a serious tipping point. The general economy was bad but our own company was in particularly poor shape. I was a young director in the US company Unisys, a massive organisation created from a merger based on debt when borrowing was cheap. Now we were struggling and the press was full of speculation about our viability.