CRITICAL STEPS TO BUILDING A BUSINESS RESILIENCE PLAN

Building a resilient business involves several key strategies to ensure your company can withstand and adapt to various challenges in a fast-changing world. Sir Richard Branson said, "Resilience comes from making mistakes and learning from them. I always encourage entrepreneurs to try and find opportunities in challenges". There are, however, a few important steps one could take to minimize the risk of failure when times are tough. Members from the Forbes Business Council suggest the following:

Start with a strong foundation.

Ensure your business has a clear mission and vision. If your whole team pulls together because they believe in what the company stands for, it will create a strong bond to drive the company forward. (Liudas Kanapienis)

Have A Roadmap To Your Goals

A good resilience plan starts with a roadmap for the overall vision of the company. When you have a clear understanding of what your goals are, you can develop strategies and policies to mitigate risks. When faced with an unexpected event that disrupts your business workflow, you need a resilience plan that involves four key components: adaptation, securities, continuity, and recovery. (Michael Ligon).

Prepare For The Unexpected

We can't always see what is coming around the corner, but we can cultivate a resilience mindset within our organization and ensure that our teams have both a plan and a prerogative that allows them to respond dynamically, bounce back faster and come back stronger. (Rachel Hodgdon)

Embrace Tension

Embrace tension instead of avoiding it. All companies live with tensions that are focused on achieving employee happiness, customer satisfaction, and meeting the numbers. If you pull on one side too much, the two other sides will suffer. To resolve this, engage in a constructive dialogue aimed at finding a resolution to a specific challenge. This builds resilience and trust. (Andreea Vanacker).

Focus On Enhancing Adaptability

Resilience plans are critical for business continuity, despite disruption. The key to a business resilience plan is adaptability without losing focus on your goals and mission. Plan your strategy by charting out steps to be taken to adapt to their needs, as well as your business environment, product changes, operation, competitors, etc. (Zaheer Dodhia)

Focus On Customers' Pain Points

Transparency and authenticity are key to continue exceptional customer experience, especially in a virtual world where customers might feel a bit disconnected and isolated from companies they interact with. Any resilience plan should focus on the customers' needs and pain points as they need to see active communication and engagement from the brands they love. (Silvia Mah)

Treat It Like A Fire Evacuation Plan

Approach it similar to how you would look at your office (or home) and the risk of a fire breaking out. Make a list of all your operations and key assets. Identify which are mission-critical, what would happen if there was a problem (or attack), and carry out a risk assessment. The risk assessment would include the likelihood of the event happening plus possible risk mitigation options.  (Maurice Castelijn)

Focus On Employee Training

Crisis does not adhere to a template. When developing a resilience plan, ensure that you focus on employee training and gaining their trust. You can have all plans in place, but they'll come to naught unless employees know when and how to put them into action. Plans must leave room for flexibility, empowering employees to be creative to best serve the interest of company, customers and partners. (Pankaj Srivastava)

Conduct Solid Market Research

Good market research and analysis are the key inputs for creating future strategies. Moreover, fast implementation done by high-profile management is the basis for the quick digital environment we are operating in. While we live and work today, we should think about tomorrow, which is just around the corner waiting for us to react and respond to all the challenges. (Vladimir Lucic)

Regularly review and update plans.

Continuously assess and update your resilience plans to ensure they remain effective and relevant. Be sure to evolve with the times and not get stuck on what worked for you in the past.

By implementing these strategies, you can build a business that is not only resilient but also capable of thriving in the face of adversity.