How to Build your Business Resilience - Part One. That is the theme of episode 46 of I Hate Numbers.

Certainly, a lot of people talk about Business Resilience. Firstly, we need to understand what Business Resilience is. Secondly, we need to know how we can improve our own Business Resilience.  Most importantly, you can improve this, and it is a practical way to deal with what faces you in a changing business landscape.

Listen to find out more

Business Resilience and your Leadership

Firstly, there are three parts to Business Resilience. Leadership information and communication. In this episode, I am going to be focusing on leadership. That is, you as a business owner, leading your business.

You need to be a good leader of your own business. Great is excellent, good is a great start point.

Leadership means being able to review a situation objectively. , and not getting deflected by.

Great leadership means taking lessons from what is going on, learning and being prepared for the next time. This is the ultimate, an ideal time to learn.

Now, unless you ask yourself this question as a leader, are you developing the right culture, the right environment in your business where you can learn, take lessons, prepare and equip yourself ready for the next situation.

Action beats inaction. For example, in this episode we look at gazelles and lions. Most importantly you need to be gazelle or a lion, in your business. Above all, take the opportunity to strengthen your leadership, to drive your business forward.

Above all, it does not matter whether you are a multinational or SME business. You are the leader; you are the one who drives the business forward.

Listen to learn more

Conclusion

Check out our Business Growth Club to move your business forward. We will show you How to Build your Business Resilience and grow your business. How to Build your Business Resilience - Part One deals with Leadership. Next week’s podcast we look at information and communication as vital parts of Business Resilience.

In This Episode

• Understanding what Business Resilience means in your business
• Appreciating the importance of your leadership as a business owner
• Being aware that you need to take action as a leader
• Developing your own Numbers confidence and decisions
• Take more control of your numbers to help make you money, survive and thrive

Links

https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/proactiveresolutionss-podcast/id1500471288

https://play.google.com/music/m/I3pvpztpjvjw6yrw2kctmtyckam?t=I_Hate_Numbers

https://open.spotify.com/show/5lKjqgbYaxnIAoTeK0zins

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/proactiveresolutionss-podcast

https://tunein.com/podcasts/Business–Economics-Podcasts/I-Hate-Numbers-p1298505/

You are listening to the I Hate Numbers Podcast with Mahmood Reza. The I Hate Numbers podcast mission is to help your business survive and thrive by you better understanding and connecting with your numbers. Number love and care is what it's about. Tune in every week. Now, here's your host, Mahmood Reza.

Hi folks, and welcome to another episode of I Hate Numbers, the show that has a mission to improve your money mindset, help you make more money in your business, give you more time, save tax, and enjoy your business life. In today's podcast episode, I'm going to be talking about business resilience. Now, one definition, a more industrial version of business resilience is dealing with shit when it hits your business fan.

Another more formal definition would be adapting well when faced with adversity, trauma threats, or sources of stress, and that's an official definition given by the American Psychological Society back in 2014. Now, you might be there thinking, why business resilience? Well, unless you are on a different planet for most of 2020 or a completely different universe, you know that the world,

not just our own personal space, has been affected by Covid-19. It's impacted on our personal space and had a massive devastating effect on many businesses. Now, I've looked at this situation in terms of my own experiences. Sectors which depend on footfall and traffic have been affected such as hospitality,

travel, premise-based businesses where the movements of individuals have to be restricted. What I've observed though from my own client base and clients that I've supported and those that I've connected with, is that in some sectors, there are still clusters of businesses that have managed to deal positively with that turbulence.

So, what is it about those businesses that have managed to withstand all that Covid-19 has thrown at them, or that the economic environment has dealt them the changing business landscape? And for me, that's what I'm going to drill down to, and that's why for me, business resilience is something that's really an important topic.

Now, there are three building blocks that make up business resilience. That's leadership, information, and communication. In this podcast today, I'm going to be focusing on leadership. That's you as business owners, being leaders in your own business. In this podcast, I'm going to dip into what business resilience is, and when I talk about leadership, I'm going to show and talk about the building blocks, the essential criteria of what good leadership is to actually help build up that business resilience.

Now, firstly, let's deal with the idea of what business resilience actually is. And at the out, business resilience is not just about having the right mindset and the right attitude to your business. Certainly they're both critical components, but that's not all. Business resilience is a very practical way of running your business,

and businesses that share these characteristics, that have taken that step forward, are not just there in large multinationals, but also exist in smaller-sized businesses as well. So, what do we actually mean by business resilience? And again, it's not just about attitude, even though mindset and attitude are really critical, it's actually a practical way of dealing with your business.

Now, in 2020, lots of businesses, both large and small, got caught out by the impact of the pandemic, and resilience is not about being able to predict exact events. Lots of businesses were certainly prepared with certain things on their radar, like IT security as an issue, doing scenario planning and the like.

Lots of organisations, though, not that many, unfortunately, still do things like scenario planning, but what they were focusing on is what would happen if a particular circumstance happened. So, resilience isn't about being able to predict the next perfect event. If you did, fantastic. You could be the Mystic Meg in your business world, but there are so many variables that can happen and change in our business environment.

There are so many what ifs from climate issues, IT issues, physical security issues, that being able to predict exactly the next thing is nigh-on-impossible. What it is though, is about being able to adapt, and change, and react when those circumstances do actually occur. Now, in this episode of I Hate Numbers, leadership is a theme that I wish to discuss.

Now, leadership, you being a leader in your own business, is actually the key. We can talk about things like techniques in terms of cash flow planning. That's only part of it, but fundamentally, it comes down to leadership. That's your leadership and the leadership displayed by your senior management team.

Now, the first thing is that you as a leader, you and the management team have to be resilient in your own minds as well. When the situation occurs, you have to be able to act with some degree of calmness, and that's something I'm going to address later on. It's what you bring to your own decision making, and you need to have a fundamental belief in a few things.

You need to be able to invest yourself in all the things that are required. It also means being able to review a situation objectively and not getting dragged in by the emotional turmoil that could be created. If you have been caught out by the pandemic, and you'll be one of many thousands of millions of businesses that have been,

and you weren't quite prepared for it before, take lessons from what's been going on to actually be prepared for the next time. This is the ultimate and ideal time to learn. Now, unless you ask yourself this question as a leader, are you developing the right culture, the right environment in your business where you can learn, take lessons, prepare and equip yourself ready for the next situation?

If not, this is the opportunity to strengthen your leadership, to be able to drive your business forward. And remember whether it's a multinational business you are running, or an SME business, or a solepreneur-type business, you are the leader. You are the one who drives the business forward. I want to share with you an African proverb here.

This is my next attribute of leadership, and it's all about action. And the African proverb involves a gazelle and a lion, and it goes something along these lines. Every morning when it wakes up the gazelle knows that it's going to have to outrun the fastest lion. If it doesn't, it's going to get killed and eaten.

Every morning the lion wakes up and it reminds itself that it must outrun the slowest gazelle if it's going to catch one in order not to starve to death. Now, the key thing about this story, it doesn't matter whether you're a lion, whether you are a gazelle, the key thing is action. So, when the sun rises every day, you need to be making sure that you are ready to take action in your business,

hitting the ground, running. Action, not being that rabbit stuck in the headlights, is a vital component of good, effective leadership. I also mentioned calmness. Now, calmness is a key attribute. I saw in many businesses that were prepared to act, they remained relatively calm. So, even though things were hitting the proverbial fan, they were remaining sanguine, stable in their own minds, and they were the ones who were going to be making those decisions.

When everyone around you is acting in turmoil, you need to remain calm, try to remain anxiety free, and you need to have that calmness and sense of purpose to make those key decisions. Making decisions when your mind is not calibrated correctly, when it's not quite there, when it's feeling very emotionally in turmoil, is not a good thing.

Now, if you're somebody who's inclined to panic and make rash decisions, somebody who doesn't really use information in their decision making framework, and those decisions are made reactively, that's a bad trait in general to have in your leadership style. Calmness and some degree of stability in being able to make those key decisions are absolutely critical.

So, let's recap where we are so far. Business resilience is not just about mindset. It's a practical system. It's a practical approach to running your business. It requires good, effective leadership. We will be touching on the other two components next week in terms of information and communication.

Leadership is not about being able to predict things exactly, but it's bringing your own personal resilience in your own mind, a degree of action, a degree of calmness to how you approach things. Now, calmness is a key attribute. As I said, that was a key component. And the last thing I want to round up with is about your own personal attitude to your business.

So, how do you see your business if you are somebody who has an investment approach to business? So, when you spend money, when you acquire new resources, do you see that as investing or do you see that just as an unnecessary overhead? Businesses run on the basis that we invest funds, resources, acquire new skills, ready to generate value and profitability in the future, and being able to support our customers and our business.

Businesses that are prepared to invest, those businesses that were marketing, spending money on promotion, upping their game in terms of systems while turbulence was going on, are the ones that weathered the storm much more effectively, and they were the ones who were much more prepared for when things began to calm down.

So, you need to learn the lessons from what's going on, certainly at the moment, and translate that into your business. Now, planning, developing your business, looking forward beyond the next week are key components of attitude. And remember, it's not just you, but you need to have that same must-do, can-do attitude embedded in your senior management team, your C-suite, to want to use an Americanism there.

So, rounding up, folks. Business resilience is absolutely key. If you feel that you lack business resilience, there is a great opportunity to develop that. It's about leadership style. It's about leadership being, having a degree of calmness, the right attitude, taking action. In next week's podcast, we're going to explore the other two components that make up business resilience, namely information and communication.

Hope you got some value from this podcast, folks. I wish you well on your journey to business resilience. I'd love it if you could share the podcast with your friends, colleagues, et cetera, and I'll see you guys on the other side next week. We hope you enjoyed this episode and appreciate you taking the time to listen to the show.

We hope you got some value. If you did, then we'd love it if you shared the episode. We look forward to you joining us next week for another I Hate Numbers episode.