As you may already know as you look forward to your entrepreneurial journey, you are going to encounter challenges, pitfalls, and crises that will threaten your business's very existence. If you are to survive in the highly unpredictable and dynamic business world, going in well prepared is crucial. Moreover, this involves weaving business resilience into your strategy from the word go. Ideally, business resilience ensures that you are able to continue key business operations in an event of a crisis, weather the storms and bounce forward to prosperity and business growth. So, how can you build a resilient organization from the start? Let’s explore a few ways below.
Develop a business resilience plan
A business resilience plan should detail all potential risks to your business and response plans to recover from them. Your starting point should be to carry out a risk assessment for your organization. Leave no stone unturned – you can cover security risks, reputation risks, compliance risks, operational risks, financial risk among others.
Your next step would be to develop a response plan to each of the risks. For instance, in case of compliance risk, you can include bringing in a legal team. However, your plan should include staying compliant with the laws and regulations from the word go. Before opening the doors, you should check that you have got the legal aspect right, especially if you are opening in a foreign country. Take the right step for company registration in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Japan, or whichever country of interest. Do this for other areas such as occupational health and safety, and data protection among others.
Adopt an integrated business model
A successful business with future viability is one that can adapt quickly, cost-effectively, and efficiently to meet market changes. Using an integrated business approach from the start empowers organizations with the required flexibility to process data faster to make informed decisions in a timely manner. This makes it possible to move faster to respond to changing markets and disruptive times. How does this happen?
Integrated business model gives an organization a sole source of truth by bringing together processes into one database to produce business information. This ensures that you have the data you need to make informed decisions in one place. This also ensures that employees remain productive and efficient. Additionally, there are no conflicting details when data is in one place and employees don’t have to start gathering data during disruptions. This means effective communication and that employees can move in faster for collaboration.
Get employee's buy-in from onboarding
Your employees are your greatest allies in taking your business forward. They hold a key responsibility in building business resilience for your organization. This starts by getting their buy-in to the business resilience plan. Ensure that you involve them in the plan development through feedback and surveys. In addition, ensure that your employees know and understand how to respond to situations in case of emergencies. The best place to start is by letting employees in on policies, emergency procedures, and guidelines and ensuring that they have updated versions of the same at all times. Moreover, starting training and awareness forums right from onboarding ensure a good start.
Ensure effective communication
Effective communication is key to a thriving business. Moreover, businesses that are able to respond quickly are the ones that have seamless communication across the board. Effective communication is important in availing information on how everyone should react and communicate in times of crisis as discussed above. In addition, it is crucial in communicating vital information to ensure that everyone stays on the same page in turbulent times.
Fostering a culture of effective communication right from the start helps in building business resilience from early on. So, incorporate communication best practices such as two-way communication, clear communication, having updated communication information for every employee, and adopting a multi-channel approach in the day-to-day running of your organization among others.
Ensure a strong financial standing
The truth is that you need finances to respond to disruptions. However, avoid rushing when it is too late by building financial resilience from the start. This includes staying on top of your accounts through cash flow management and budgeting. Find ways to cut down on costs while also keeping an eye on how to maximize revenue such as identifying new income opportunities. In addition, create budgets and stick to them to help make better financial decisions. Budgets are also great at identifying funding gaps, which gives proactivity in taking steps to fill them before a crisis happens.
Conclusion
Running a business is never without hard times, whether expected or unexpected. Your best survival tip would be to build a resilient business right from the start. Start by conducting a risk assessment and developing response plans. In addition, focus on getting the buy-in from employees, fostering effective communication, adapting an integrated business model, and building a strong financial standing.