If there's no money, a disaster, a war, your product blows up in your face or you've run out of cash, management must still manage. In other words, don't complain, don't explain; try to figure the situation out, solve the problem, and do something to get moving again. Momentum counts. Persistence counts.

Someone once said "Every success is the transformation of a previous failure; therefore, if you fail, it is because you quit too soon." Although this may not be true in every instance, there's a lot to be said for not quitting too soon. Persistence counts and in the long run, persistence generally wins out.

Today the news is filled with anxiety provoking stories about dot com failures and near death experiences. Forbes reports that "e-commerce company Beyond.com (nasdaq: BYND), entertainment e-tailer BigStar.com (nasdaq: BGST), PlanetRx.com (nasdaq: PLRX), health care site Drkoop.com (nasdaq: KOOP), athletic goods supplier Fogdog (nasdaq: FOGD), Pets.com (nasdaq: IPET) and E-Stamp (nasdaq: ESTM)" have fallen to the point where they are in danger of being delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange. Investors who only 12 months ago bought anything with a dot com in its name, some of which didn't even have a business plan, are now nervously eyeing the bond markets, looking for a little safe haven, where the winds don't blow so hard and the investment weather doesn't shift so treacherously.

Granted, the market was too "exuberant" before, as Alan Greenspan pointed out. But the concept that some of these companies have lost almost all their value is equally untrue. Many good companies simply need time to grow and learn, to make mid-course corrections and acquire the corporate wisdom needed to turn the corner into profitability. No one has all the answers in this totally new industry, and certainly no one wakes up with them on day one.

What will dot coms do? What should they do? Harold Geneen, the great manager of ITT's then 250 some odd international companies in varied industries used to repeat: " Management must manage." He said it over and over until it was almost a mantra. What he meant was that a manager truly had to try to get this arms around all the relevant facts and information, then, whatever the facts were, he had to take whatever actions were necessary to carry out his company's plan and make a profit from the situation.

If times are good ,"management must manage". If times are bad ,"management must manage." If there's no money, a disaster, a war, your product blows up in your face or you've run out of cash, management must still manage. In other words, don't complain, don't explain; try to figure the situation out, solve the problem, and do something to get moving again. Momentum counts . Confronting the problem and taking action reassures and leads on to success.

Geneen also mentioned that if your company isn't making a profit now, one solution is to take your company back to a time when it was making money. In other words, if you were profitable when you had 3 people in your human resources department and now you have five, go back to having 3. If you were profitable when you had a core division selling the product you knew best, get rid of new divisions which may be draining your cash. Perhaps this is not the solution for you, but the essential point is that there is some solution and you must find it.

Your job is to apply all you know and all your energies to solving your company's problems. And that brings us back to persistence. One of the most crucial elements to bring to the task, the foundation of most success, is persistence. As Harold Geneen used to say " If you've tried 23 times and failed, you must try the 24th time. You must keep searching for a solution that is not just for the moment, but which is strategic and generic and forms a permanent solution to the problem."

Many dot coms made a very understandable mistake. They listened to the Venture Capitalists who were financing them, who told them to spend like there was no tomorrow. These investors gave them big wads of cash and said, figuratively, "Burn, baby, burn." Advertising firms must have felt like they'd just won the Lotto. New age entrepreneurs, possibly on their first business, walked in the door and asked what their ad budget should be and advertising gurus tossed back "Thirty million for a national launch." They could spend that in a week, or , at most, a few months. In the meantime, no one back at the office gained any wisdom or insight. At best, they learned it's never a good idea to turn an ad firm loose with your wallet. Marketers, as they say, are optimists, while accountants are pessimists. The whole investment community has become pessimistic over dot coms, it seems.

Yet the shake out is really very good news. It means those companies left standing have learned something and managed to withstand the storm. Perhaps those managers who are left gained some experience in a previous business, like those who suffered through the great Depression who learned to pay cash and always keep something back for a rainy day.

Venture capitalist Ann Winblad points out there is more investment money out there now than before, but it will go to fewer people. It will go, in all likelihood, to those entrepreneurs and business people who truly understand the concept of profit and how to get there in a hurry, which is not the same as spending your way into oblivion.

Profit is about smart strategy, executed with as much energy and precision as you and your team can bring to bear. Greg Kyle, President of New York-based Pegasus Research International, points out: "More and more consumers are coming onto the Web and more and more consumers are spending money on the Web." And more and more businesses and countries are spending more money on the Web. Some dot coms will reap the benefit of all that money.

These will be the dot coms who, at the end of each day, persist.