Disruption-Proof Your Business

A major source of stress for leaders is unexpected disruptions: say your best person quits, a key supplier goes out of business, or a governing body calls and puts you on notice.

Today I will teach you how to disruption-proof your business. It's important because when you're stressed you aren't thinking or performing at your best. Leaders who disruption-proof their businesses can access their team's creativity to arrive at great decisions and solutions even when the worst scenarios come knocking at their doors.

Mark, one of the most disruption-proof leaders I've met, told me of a time when his food services company sold tainted products that resulted in customers dying.

Talk about a crisis of trust. And not just in the customer's minds, but also in his team. They didn't know what to do or how to deal with the fact that their work had led to unintended disaster in the lives of those customers and their families.?

What Mark relied on to rally his team and discover the source of the problem so they could regain their customers' trust was vision.?

He brought them back to their vision and purpose for doing the work they did. Nobody there had intended to kill anybody. They did their work to bring great food to their community. And that vision is what would drive their work in the weeks and months ahead.

They quickly discovered the source of the contamination and addressed how it was missed so it would never happen again. It took years for the company to rebuild its trust with consumers, but they got there.

They did it through belief in their purpose. They held true to the vision.?

In times of deep disruption to your business, only the highest overarching purpose can provide enough power to get people through the low point without circling deeper into despair.?

That's why it's crucial to create a compelling vision for you and your team to refer to when things get tough.

You may not see yourself as a visionary leader, but you can do this because you have a reason for showing up to work. Of all the thousands of things you could be doing with your life right now, you're choosing to lead the team that you are. That means you have a vision for this business and you can state it in a powerful way.?

It doesn't have to be fancy at first. Your vision for your team can evolve over time, and the seeds of it are already planted in the work you're doing today. Here's a simple way to articulate a vision that will guide you and your team through any disruptions.

Go for a walk with the people you work most closely with. The change of scenery, the movement, and the fresh air will have you thinking bigger and more freely. Ask them what they think you do as a company and why. Let your minds wander and have fun with the exercise. Find out who benefits from what you do and how. Find out what change you're making in the world by doing the work you do.?

At the end of 3-5 walks with team members over the course of a week, you'll have a good sense of what's most important about what your business does. If you feel inspired you'll know you're on the right track.?

With the ideas percolating, write some of the main themes on a whiteboard or other large surface. Find ways to bring them together but again, don't get too fancy. Your vision is something that you'll be saying thousands of times over the years ahead. You want it to be so straightforward that your team can find themselves using it in a sentence by accident.?

Once you've got it, display it prominently. Use it in meetings. Start your "thinking time" journaling with it (you do have thinking time on the schedule, don't you? If not, no worries. We'll get you there in a future article).

From that vision, you'll have the necessary motivation and buy-in to put the other two steps in place to disruption-proof your business. In brief they are:

1. Become antifragile. This was something we did all the time at Shopify. Assess your biggest weaknesses to external or internal change. And rather than thinking about how to make them stronger, run experiments to see what happens when you mess with them. This will tap into the strength and creativity of your people by asking them for new ways to handle problems.
2. Build trust. When your team trusts you and each other then magic can happen. A team without trust is like an engine with only half the pistons: it's way underpowered. And it will struggle under strain. So build trust by involving them in the process of becoming disruption-proof. Let them know why they matter and show them that you mean it by listening to their concerns and taking care of their well-being, especially when things get challenging. ?

A word of warning: you will likely find yourself thinking you're too busy to do all this. But don't listen to that thought. If you think you're busy now, just imagine what it will be like when the proverbial cold winter comes and you don't have the resources in place to weather the storm. You don't want that kind of busy.?

So if you do only one thing after reading this article, make it this: schedule walks with your team members (even in winter, doesn't have to be long) and ask them what they think you do as a company and why it matters. Take those thoughts and turn it into a sentence that you use with them ongoingly, through good times and bad.

If you want to work with me on disruption-proofing your business, I'm offering a 4-week course with my wife and fellow coach, Erin Aquin, starting this week. Learn more here.