Overcoming Your "Venice" Moment. Resilience and Humour go a long way to resolving even the most difficult Challenges

Flooding in Venice, Italy this week reached a historic level last seen in 1966. The damages are in the Billions of Euro. Priceless artifacts sustained irreparable damage.

The Veneto people have responded with unparalleled Resilience and a great sense of Humour.

Award winning organic restaurant Venissa, which boasts a Michelin Star, posted this photo of their staff serving an “aperitivo” on the beautiful waterfront terrace.

Local residents identified the root cause of the flooding as a malfunctioning water fountain.

The city known globally for luxury fashion shopping was not about to allow a flood to stop visitors from buying the latest branded goods:

The lessons we can take from this for our own companies are:

1. The power of resilience
2. The might of a communal shared fortune
3. and willingness not to be defeated against overwhelming odds.

Delta Air lines, now ranked by frequent flyers as the preferred United States airline, had filed for bankruptcy in 2005 after accumulating more than $10 Billion USD in losses following September 11th.

19 months later, the company exited in 2007 and went on to pay a record $1.3 Billion in profit sharing bonuses to employees on February 14th, 2019.

The employees all worked together to overcome very difficult strategic hurdles.

Delta is now once again a company where customers want to spend money. The company is closer to their customers, and executing on their needs and strategic priorities.

I hope your company will never face a “Venice” moment.

Risk management and solid strategic planning should both help.

If you do confront such a major challenge, recall the story of “Venissa” and the focused, dedicated staff that helped overcome even the challenge of Mother Nature.