Reflection, Resilience, and Gratitude

If you own or manage a business, 2020 has been quite an adventure. For employees, 2020 has been filled with plenty of uncertainty and stressful moments. Apart from the chaos and shenanigans of a highly-polarized US Presidential election year, the global governmental response to the COVID-19 pandemic has created a volatile business environment with deep-reaching personal and socio-economic repercussions that are yet to be fully felt or understood. For many, every day has become an ongoing struggle to keep life as “normal” as possible without succumbing to fear.

Looking ahead to 2021, things are not magically going to get better on January 2nd, 2021. We still have socio-political turmoil in the United States and other Countries, COVID-19 vaccines aren’t projected to be in widespread use until April, and there are numerous other economic, environmental, and political issues that will continue to drive us off-balance. We can look forward to more uncertainty and volatility for at least the first half of the next year.

Looking back to see forward

As a smart operator, you have hopefully been tracking your cash-profitability and having meaningful discussions with your accountant and business coach at least once each quarter. Some questions to ask yourself:

What were our goals for the year?

• How close are we to meeting our organizational goals from our Strategic Plan?

Where did we succeed, and where can we improve?

• Were we able to pivot in response to 2020’s challenges and opportunities?
• Where did we fail, and what can be learned?
• When we succeeded, did we capture what helped to deliver the outcome?

Who will to be recognized and rewarded?

• Identify the team-members that have earned special rewards, and be sure to recognize (appreciation is worth more than just money) every member of the team that contributed to success this year.
• If there are still underperformers on the team, refine your mentoring plan for each one of them, so that they can finally shine or a find a different team to work with.

How has our corporate culture improved?

• Did we succeed in creating and sustaining a supportive environment to help all team members feel like they have opportunities to work, learn, and grow?
• Does the leadership team encourage our entire organization to serve our clients by improving their lives with better water quality?
• Does the entire team understand our company’s vision for the future, and do we have a clearly defined mission statement to help guide them through the present?
• Have we defined a value statement to help the team understand what we believe in as an organization? 

Did we meet our financial goals?

• 2020 introduced a lot of unexpected costs that need to be reconciled. Carefully review all expenses like advertising, marketing, commissions, wages, sick-leave, morale-boosting activities, additional cleaning and sanitization costs, gloves, masks, hand sanitizer and other PPE expenses, owners’ compensation, and everything else required to stay open this year.
• Understanding your actual overhead and true labor costs will empower you to charge the correct prices for your products and services, so that you can serve your clients better, and provide fair compensation to yourself and your team.

Did we actually make any money?

Review three fundamental business financial reports:

• Balance sheet - shows your business's assets, liabilities, and equity.
• Income statement - helps you quickly see if your business is profitable by itemizing your revenue and expenses, and whether they ended in a gain or loss of money.
• Cash flow statement - shows you where the money went. 

·        Cash flow from operating activities – revenue and expenses

·        Cash flow from investing activities - assets purchased and sold

·        Cash flow from financial activities - loans and loan repayments

Once you have examined these, dig a little deeper by checking your current ratio, total debt ratio, and profit margin. It will not take long with a little help from your accountant.

What do we want to achieve next year?

Look at your own goals and align them with broader company strategic goals. This is good to discuss with your leadership team, and then communicate to the entire organization so that they can understand the “'why” as much as the “'how”. If you don’t know or believe in the “why”, don’t expect to be able to sell your team on it!

Once you have completed your review, work on what needs to be improved and continue to assess your performance every quarter, adjusting as needed.

Resilience creates calm

After almost a full year of disruptions, we are more than ready for a return to calm and “normal”. The robustness of the Unites States’ economy has enabled many businesses to survive and even thrive through many of this year’s events. This can sometimes lead to overconfidence, so be careful and prudent; take the short-term success and use it to become more resilient. Some things to consider as you plan for next year:

Supply-chain Interruptions and cost increases

• Procurement problems and material delays will impact jobs. Our industry is already seeing the effects of this. Early COVID-19 disruptions occurred in China, and their production delays are still manifesting on construction jobs. Contractors can expect material costs to go up and completion times on projects to slow down.
• Lock-downs, quarantines, and mandatory social distancing
• Workers who are ill will be unable to come to work
• Workers may be afraid to come to work even if healthy, or may have to stay home and attend to sick family members.
• More stringent “Lock-Downs” and quarantines will prevent employees from coming to work, even if they are not sick.
• Lenders, government agencies, supply-houses, and engineering firms are running with reduced staff, which causes unexpected delays.
• Illnesses, quarantines, and local regulations will slow down jobs and potentially shut them down.

Cash Flow Counts now more than ever before

Follow-up on those slow-pay accounts – offer cash settlements where appropriate

Developing an attitude of gratitude

Part of our internal drive is to be inherently dissatisfied with the status quo. This innate dissatisfaction drives us to invent, to innovate, and to improve ourselves and the world around us. In difficult and uncertain times, it is easy to feel like life is hard. During times like this, it is common to feel overwhelmed, euphoric, depressed, and excited all in the same day. This emotional rollercoaster can be balanced by developing and improving our gratitude. Some people might counter and say that there’s nothing to be grateful for during this unprecedented time, but it is crucial that you step back and consider all that you SHOULD be grateful for right now. Your mental health and company culture depend on it.

The first thing to do in finding gratitude is to make a distinction between feeling grateful and being grateful. We do not have complete and total control over all our emotions. We cannot simply “will” ourselves to feel grateful, or less depressed, or even “happy”. Our feelings develop from how we look at the world. The thoughts we have about the way things are as compared to the way that things should be tends to define our mindset.  Having an Attitude of Gratitude is a conscious choice that we must make each day.

When disaster strikes, gratitude provides a perspective from which we can view life in its entirety and not be overwhelmed by temporary circumstances.

Three simple tips to improve our Gratitude are:

Think about it, write about it, and talk about it

When writing your workday notes, after-action reports, or diary entries, write down the things that you appreciated. Talk to your team about the things that you are happy for in the daily grind of your business operations.

Express gratitude every day

Say “Thank You”, and truly mean it. Acknowledge people for who they are, and what they do that you appreciate. Try writing an old-fashioned Thank-You note.

Find strength in the gratitude of others

Keep good company, don’t surround yourself with miserable people, and don’t get caught up in dwelling on negative ideas.

We are all glad to put 2020 behind us, and it certainly could have been worse. We are living in an exciting time, surrounded by good people, and it is a great time to be in the water quality improvement industry. I am certainly grateful for it; and wish you all the best for 2021!

 Recommended reading:

Type R: Transformative Resilience for Thriving in a Turbulent World, Ama Marston and Stephanie Marston

Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges, Steven M. Southwick