There are a lot of voices out there with ideas about how to brave the economic storm, and none more experienced than Jack Welch.

During this rainy Saturday, I had a chance to catch up on some accumulated reading and was pleased, again, to find that Jack and I have been advising companies about similar strategies.

We both have learned how rare it is that anyone has cut too much from their budgets. If you stay tuned for my upcoming podcast at The Leadership Forum, you’ll hear me speak about the “first loss is the best loss” in encouraging business leaders to cut deep enough to weather the storm. In that same podcast, I also emphasize “transparency” and the need to make your employees part of the solution rather than part of the problem. You can also hear John Doer, the VC legend, talk about this exact same strategy.

Like Jack, I also talk in the podcast about incentives and how important it is to use a scalpel rather than a hachet in making cost reduction decisions so that the people you rely upon for success will still be rewarded.