Bouncing back!
It has rightly been argued before that, resilient businesses always stand higher chances of surviving and bouncing back from slumps. Over the past 3 years, many businesses have suffered greatly especially due to the effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic and most recently the war in Ukraine. These effects plus other relatively smaller hardships (some artificial, some natural) on businesses and economies around the globe have been elaborated extensively in several published articles and papers. There is indeed no doubt that the business terrain has been increasingly difficult for most enterprises, in as much as some have incidentally managed to thrive. Herein, I share some thoughts on how those adversely affected can realistically bounce back stronger.
It is worth noting that business resurgence is not always as simple as it may sound appealing, and is subject to many factors some of which include intentionality, preparedness, innovation, and sometimes serendipity. Let us focus on these for now.
In philosophy intentionality is defined as ‘the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs.’ It is a mental state grounded in one’s own belief about what is and/or should be, and it stands on a conviction relating to a certain subject matter. Businesses need to adopt intentionality with regard to reshaping the results of their operations if they are to bounce back. They must believe that they can, and act like it - this being resonated in the organisation’s culture, communication tone, the attitude of top management, and the investments made towards resurgence. A proper assessment of the state of affairs needs to be made to establish how dire the situation is or is not and to identify areas that could potentially unlock value within the enterprise and without. Sometimes it helps to get an independent eye to do a proper and comprehensive diagnostic review of the enterprise. Once this assessment is done, then the business must have the courage and pliability to take the requisite measures to address the identified issues especially as these usually come at a cost.
Intentionality feeds directly into preparedness/preparation. An important question to ask is: how prepared are we as a business to take that all-important leap from the bottom? Abraham Lincoln, one of the founding fathers of the USA, once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” This analogy can be transposed to struggling businesses that seem to be doing so much but realizing dismal results. The problem often lies in the effectiveness of the actions they are taking or how these are implemented – the axe might be blunt. A critical assessment of this is important, and attendant research and benchmarking should be done to refine the business approach. This approach has to reflect the evolving market context – consumer tastes and preferences, competitive landscape, supply chain, and value chain dynamics –, and refinement of the internal business models to align with these, as well as the efficiency of the infrastructure and its attendant cost structure. Effective business continuity planning, business planning, turnaround planning, strategic planning, and reviews of plans withstanding are important investments at this point. This is preparation.
Having done the preparation then, deliberation has to be made around improving internal processes, technology, products, and value propositions. This calls for innovativeness which is usually driven by a motivated and empowered workforce and a robust R&D department. Innovation is as important in the continuing success of the business as it is in times of business difficulty. Internal innovations need to be encouraged and rewarded, and thereafter piloted and proliferated, while external ones need to be quickly and thoroughly observed, studied for effectiveness, and replicated where possible. As someone bluntly put it, “if you do not innovate, you die”, and as the American inventor, Thomas A. Edison averred, “There is a way to do it better – find it.”
Lastly, serendipity (luck or chance) is also important when discussing resurgence. It is being in the right place at the right time. Not every great achievement or growth will be realized through direct effort. For some, it will be a stroke of luck, for example, a major competitor runs bankrupt; a strategic investor picks interest in your business/market; an experimental product is received well by the market; a new invention is made by accident; the new commodity demanded in the market can be produced on your same production lines; etc. Likewise, many times opportunity comes disguised as difficulty: Wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” However, as an adage goes, “Opportunity favours the most prepared.” Tim Fargo embeds this further by saying, “Opportunity doesn't make appointments, you have to be ready when it arrives.” As such businesses must be intentional, prepared, and innovative enough to take advantage of chances to seize new opportunities.
Going back to where we began, measures of resilience should be interwoven in the fabric of businesses if they are to survive. And although the past 3 years have been punctuated with one calamity after another, it is still possible for businesses to bounce back strongly and ride above the tide. As a good friend of mine, Stephen Namanya, recently wrote, “We don’t just ‘bounce back’ from difficult situations—we ‘bounce forward’ into new realms, learning to be more adaptable as our circumstances evolve and change.’”
The writer is a corporate and project finance specialist at Frontier Advisory Partners.