PPB August 2020

Resilience: Your Competitive Advantage In The Age Of COVID-19 How well is your business prepared to rebound in these challenging times? by Paul Kiewiet, MAS+, CIP, CPC “Resilience is accepting your new reality even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” – Elizabeth Edward D o you know anyone who has not been negatively affected by the current health and economic crisis? What we’re about to witness is how each individual handles this crisis and thousands of very different outcomes. Frommy experience, challenging times do not so much build character as reveal it, and this current situation will show us who we are. The McKinsey consulting firm writes, “Resiliency— the ability to absorb a shock and to come out of it better than the competition—will be the key to survival and long-term prosperity. COVID-19 could end up dwarfing the financial crisis in economic damage. In that case, it will not be enough for many companies to tweak their business model; instead they will need to rethink it.” Re-Think Your Plan That 2020 business plan that you wrote back in December or January needs a rethink. Re-think: what are you building? Socrates said that the secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but building the Lightspring / Shutterstock.com 72 | AUGUST 2020 | THINK