Building Business Resilience and Enduring Todays Adversity

If there’s anything that people have learned from this global pandemic, it’s that nothing is guaranteed. COVID-19 has shown businesses that the future is unpredictable, and we can never fully prepare for what’s to come. The next crisis could easily be around the corner, and there’s nothing that some people can do to save their companies from taking on water.

That said, there’s a need to urgently yet soberly begin the preparations for the next business catastrophe. Through this planning effort, we are able to build business resilience to overcome any adversity. So how can your company actualize such grand goals? Here are three key strategies that can help you overcome the waves of uncertainty.

Business resilience is not just a matter of withstanding or overcoming hurdles. It also entails learning from past mistakes and elevating your organization to greater heights. Your company will not grow if you don’t cultivate a culture of looking back to past events for reference and improvements. Rather than facing new business challenges, you’ll keep recycling old problems. 2020 has brought with it a lot of disruption and confusion, both individually and globally. 

However, business adversity has always been an invisible enemy that was often unavoidable. That’s why, as mentioned earlier, there’s a real need to stay prepared. It’s also essential to accept that emergency response plans may not always work. Nonetheless, this shouldn’t undermine your strategy development. Below are crucial steps your organization should take to manage adversity.

Wins, losses, adversity, and luck are some of the typical business situations that every organization endures. This every changing landscape is why it’s crucial to create a resilient workforce and keep them motivated and less susceptible to burnout. A happy employee is better able to perform, handle change management, and contribute to higher profit margins. Below are some of the benefits your business will gain by adopting resilience as a professional value.

There’s a practical reason why communication skills are taught in colleges and universities today. Without good communication skills, no transactions would ever occur. This reality dates back to days when our ancestors would practice barter trade with neighboring communities that spoke different dialects. Resilience breeds openness and confidence in your personnel. That translates to more effective action when there is a need to speak up and contribute to problem-solving tasks.

Resilient people can quickly identify challenges and make sensible decisions without getting emotionally clouded. They use calm and rationale to deal with uncomfortable situations, rather than play the blame games. Consequently, this means that even when business issues occur, your employees will solve them swiftly oftentimes without the need for management.

It’s not unheard of to find employees complaining of unrealistic project goals and deadlines. And in such cases, the workforce morale slowly starts to dissipate. People begin to show up late to work or even skip work altogether, feigning illness, among other things. However, reinforcing a resilient culture encourages good communication and openness, leading to unanimous goals.

Resilience goes hand in hand with good organizational and management skills. How else can you adequately prepare for the future if you can’t manage present challenges? Resilient leaders organize their current plans to align with their feasible future goals, thus promoting productivity throughout the company. 

A resilient employee is confident in their skillset and open to feedback. They don’t worry about asking for help when they face difficulties. Instead, they see great value in teamwork to achieve success. They will also provide the support to others when asked without fear of their position being taken by another. Great employees understand that the most value they can bring to an organization is to improve results while building up the next generation of leaders.

A wise man learns from his mistakes. COVID-19 has proven that the world is not ready for another massive crisis. It has caused suffering to many people in all aspects of their lives, unraveled social relationships, highlighting business weaknesses, hampering people’s livelihoods, destroying dreams, and other difficult scenarios.

So how can you best respond to the inevitable challenges ahead and still retain business success? As it turns out, about 10% out of 1,000 publicly traded companies fared better than the majority during the pandemic. What did they do differently from the other 90%? Here are some vital lessons that a diligent leader should heed from the ongoing crisis. Failure to do so could result in a repeat of the same, if not worse.