On black swans, uncertainty in business

It was the late Anita Roddick, Founder of the Body Shop, who said, “nobody talks about entrepreneurship as a survival skill, but that is exactly what it is – and what nurtures creative thinking”. A survival skill.

Entrepreneurs are especially vulnerable to uncertain times – not readily assured of a monthly salary, even though saddled with monthly costs and expenditure of running a business.

All such incidences can make the times and seasons uncertain. And it can be tough. But in all honesty, all times are uncertain, for we all live in the present, for and in the moment.

Today, or in a particular season, a business can enjoy increased sales and better client engagement – and even then it doesn’t mean that the business future we desire is certain.

Price, prize of entrepreneurship

The price of entrepreneurship is uncertainty, and the prize is a vision fulfilled, success even in the midst of uncertainty. Much of the process of entrepreneurship involves tremendous risk taking, risk that is buoyed with competency, skills, ability, networking, service excellence and good fortune.

It is often the uncertainty in those moments that fuel your drive to success – and I think that is what Anita Roddick meant when she said that the survival nature of entrepreneurship fuels creativity.

Uncertainty, fuel for success drive

It has often been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it. In other words, create your own certainties. What are those things that you are certain of in your business? Could that be your expertise?

Could your certainty be the collaborative, adaptable modus operandi of your organisation? Whatever your certainty is, it can enable you to better anticipate Black Swans – that rare, high impact and unpredictable calamitous event with extreme consequences. We can’t predict calamities, but we can develop the resilience to cope with them.

How is that resilience developed? Ah, that question goes to the heart of why a business exists, and how that why is servicing how a business is operated, and, critically, knowing how to look uncertainty in the eye, knowing its limits.

Imagine the amount of businesses across West Africa that were affected by the Ebola crisis four years ago.

One such business was The Radisson Blu which had just opened in Freetown. The city’s only international hotel chain, its owners I imagine, looked forward to a surge of business.

There was a scarcity of high quality international hotels in Sierra Leone, and the Radisson Blu was tipped to take extreme advantage of the increasing amount of business travellers coming into Freetown – from mining companies, to UN and NGO staff, to professional services firms.

Recently refurbished, the hotel was ready for business. And then Ebola happened.

A major exodus of nationals and expatriates followed, as did an extreme decline in business travellers. Even nationals who might have enjoyed an evening meal or Sunday lunch with the family at Radisson Blu shied away – prompted by the dangers of inadvertent exchange of bodily fluids from everyday human contact.

Staring uncertainty in the eye, the GM of Radisson Blu was decisive. Committed to his position as a leader, when everyone was leaving Freetown, he stayed – instilling trust, loyalty and confidence in himself from his team as he did so. He commented that the uncertainty of what might happen at the end of each business day made business unpredictable.

With extreme

With the extreme dip in business, Radisson Blu was even forced to consider the inevitable – laying off the very staff they had invested massively in through hospitality and wellness training.

Deploying the support of unions, the issues at hand were discussed with staff and everyone agreed to remain in their positions while taking a salary cut.

What that rendered was tremendous team spirit, motivation and increased loyalty. And when the international public health and disease control experts came into Freetown to manage Ebola, many checked in to the Radisson Blu.

There is something to be said for strong leadership and best practice – those standards and practices that govern how an entity or a professional service is operated.

Deciding to deploy those standards in the operations of your business from day one, or as early as possible, stands you in good stead.

While others may think you are creating unnecessary bottlenecks for your business in an already unfriendly business climate, best practice can stand you out in the long term.

For Radisson Blu, I imagine, it must have been this best practice that comes from being an international chain committed to certain operational standards that rendered them the first choice hotel for those health workers, international reporters and international administrators that flew into Freetown to respond to the Ebola crisis.

We can’t always prevent uncertainties – otherwise they would not be called uncertainties – but we can develop our resilience and capacity to cope better with them.

We can do this through a process that I call “paying attention to the way you pay attention”.

The writer is a motivational speaker/CEO, KIMO Home. E-mail: hillary@kimogroup.com