People often say the only certainty in life is change. As we enter the next phase of this pandemic, the uncertainty continues and resilience is more important than ever.

 

With the last 16 months underlining this likely more than any other time in history, it’s important to understand the future of your business.The more you know about how external factors will affect your business, the better you can adjust quickly and succeed when change happens.

 

Through my practice, I like to look at four distinct yet interrelated areas. I call these the four pillars of business growth:

 

 

That’s why I currently work with my clients on a long-term basis. In the past I’ve worked with people on simply developing a strategy, but every time I would run into a client that I’d done this for I would ask, “how’s the strategy working?” And their response was always, “we never actually implemented it, and we aren’t performing near to our planned expectations.” The execution must happen to make the strategy work! 

 

By paying attention to these four pillars, companies are able to develop incredible resilience. This is a recipe for success and, when tied together with the tools for resilience, your company can thrive while others struggle.  However, neither should not be thought of in a linear fashion. I encourage my clients to reflect on each by creating a monthly review process.

 

It’s important to look at your results and see how you are executing. Then, go back to the strategy and make sure you are still on course, or determine if you need to change things. If you need to change, do you need to change your operations or your strategy? In my experience, most of the time it’s the operations that need to change, but sometimes there also needs to be adjustments to the strategy — especially in our ever-changing world.

 

This circular approach to managing your business is the key to success. Many of your competitors will not have the discipline to do this, so if you can maintain this discipline, you have a much higher chance of success.

The tools for resilience I’ve created are designed to be applied to the four pillars of business growth. Utilizing these tools in your decision-making process will allow you to understand success factors during times of economic change.

 

 

Having the four pillars in place and applying these tools can help you rapidly adapt successfully to change. The easier you can predict the future, the more successful you will be in an ever-changing economy.