Lots of evidence recently of COVID-related health damages and deaths. Hiring qualified replacements is increasingly difficult. For a business today, this is a scary but terribly real situation. But, what if a business lost, say, up to two-thirds of its workforce as a result? Is there anything it can do to prepare, especially given the possibility that no such worker-loss horror will actually occur?
Businesses fail for many different reasons, and often for some combination of these. True causes are seen most clearly post-failure, from the smoking rubble. But these causes are almost always detectable long before the final crash and burn. Signs of trouble are there someplace, but few businesses have any way to spot them. That’s what a resilience process can do.
“Big” is an easy target for many unpleasant events. Why? Because “big” tends to be all over the place and any impacts are going to hit “big” in a major way. “Big” also consists of many interdependent parts. “Small” is not everywhere so impacts may not even see it. The lesson: Restructure your big business into many small, largely independent units.
