How to Adapt to Volatile Times

Here we are in the final August edition of my weekly newsletter!?Also keep in the front of your mind that I have my weekly Newsweek interview today at 12 pm EDT / 9 am PT/5 pm GMT. I’ll be talking about using humor in business with Jennifer Aaker and Naomi Bagdonas, the authors of Humor, Seriously . For your day-of reminder, click here .

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While it is obvious to say that these times have been volatile, what some might have missed is how that same volatility can dramatically accelerate growth. Last week I spoke with Jonathan Brill, the author of Rogue Waves . He talked about how people and companies can plan for compound growth, but compound growth is null and void when the world is dramatically disrupted. Being able to successfully navigate rogue waves is not simply an act of resilience, but a moment for opportunity. If you would like to listen to our conversation in its entirety, you can watch our discussion here . This is a selection of points Jonathan made during our discussion:

Reframing volatility as an opportunity:

“I think there's two ways to look at this. One is you look at risk and you say, ‘Oh, what are the downsides?’ The other is you look at risk as volatility and say, ‘What are the upsides? What are the opportunities if I position myself better, if I'm more resilient. How do I drive growth?' If you believe, as I do, that most of the indicators suggest that the next decade is going to be more volatile than the last three or four, that suggests that we want to rethink our corporate strategies and our leadership strategies. The reality is, if you take a look over the last several decades, more billionaires are minted in downturns than in upturns because of that volatility. They prepare to be resilient and to take advantage of those disruptions when everybody else is just trying to get along and sail on smooth seats.”

Future-proofing yourself:

“So, this is a valid approach whether you're successful or whether you fail at predicting the future. I think what we need to do is we need to think, and I'm getting maybe a level too deep here, about the impacts of different types of disruption on our company, on our finances, on our operations, on our external environment and on things like our strategy. If you start to think about, okay, well, what would happen if this happened over here and that happened over there and they collided, what would that do to my company? If you look in enough different situations, what you find is you future-proof yourself against almost any situation.”

The ABCs of resilient growth:

“We need to be able to respond to and exploit the change and have a culture that allows us to do that. That's what I call the ABCs of resilient growth, A, being awareness. First, we need to be aware that [these changes] exist. B, being behavior. We have to have the skills. We have to have the behaviors that allow us to understand and exploit the change. And C is culture. We have to have the processes and incentives that make it possible to practice these behaviors that encourage people looking outside of the organization instead of looking in.”

Thank you for reading my newsletter! To learn more about Jonathan Brill, head over to his website at jonathanbrill.com , or check out this article that Jonathan and I wrote for Harvard Business Review about identifying and mitigating risk in your career. Next week I’ll be talking with Katy Milkman about how to make change stick! For a calendar reminder, click here .

On a final note, I am slowly picking back up my goal of mastering latte art, and you can check in on my progress by following my instagram page .

Wishing you health and success -?

Dorie