How to Thrive in these Turbulent Times

Profile Picture of Post's Author Charlene McLauchlan | Posted October 18, 2021

In the last blog, Matt Heemstra outlined a few of the things companies do that are good at change:

  • They embrace change as an opportunity to be better and to differentiate from the competition
  • They don’t fear failure
  • They have a clear vision of where they want to go

This is a simple but powerful list of principles for setting your company up for success in these modern turbulent times.

There is no question that running your business today is quite different that your predecessors 20 years ago. The bottlenecks in transportation right now…shipping containers tied up on ships and ports, a shortage of dock workers and truck drivers has impacted just about everything in our economy. This situation is a good example of how intertwined our systems are, the definition of a complex system. The delay in goods arriving at their destination is backing up manufacturing which in impacting jobs and productivity. It is a huge wakeup call for Americans who want everything now.

I just moved from California to Minnesota; it took 7 weeks to get our furniture delivered because the movers could not find truck drivers. Our belongings sat in storage in Salinas, CA.

With the dairy business clearly an interconnected global marketplace, how is this transportation bottleneck affecting your business? What about the “help wanted” signs everywhere? In my Minnesota community they are offering a $5,000 signing bonus for school bus drivers, with a starting salary of $21/hour. How do you compete for labor in your local market?

Going back to Matt’s three points:

  • Are you spending time with your vision?
  • Are you mitigating risks by playing the “What if” game?
  • Imagine scenario’s that could impact your vision.
  • Are you including people who “think differently” than you in your scenario planning?
  • What are some of the trade offs you might have to make?
  • Keep this document alive; not something you only look at every 10 years.

I’ll close with the Serenity Prayer by the American theologian R. Niebuhr:

“God grant me the serenity of accept the things I cannot change. Courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Remember to accept our world is very volatile, ambiguous and complex; so, plan and keep revisiting the plan because change is an opportunity!

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