Navigating Resilience and Risk Management: Conquering Challenges in a Changing World

Looking at risks again

After the pandemic, it’s important for businesses to look at their risks. This means thinking about lots of different things that could go wrong, like money problems, issues with how the business runs, changes in the market, and even problems with how people see your business. You need to figure out what risks are most likely to happen and plan for how to deal with them.

Not sure where to start? Take my two-minute business health assessment to see what you’re good at and what you need to work on. Then, we can help you get on the right track.

Getting ready for the unexpected

The recent pandemic showed that global supply chains can have big problems, and this caused trouble for many businesses, even ones that don’t sell physical things. It taught us that we need to find weak spots in our business and make plans to deal with big problems.

Can your business handle a sudden shortage of workers? What if one of your suppliers can’t deliver what you need? Do you have a plan for how to talk to people during a crisis?

Read this article from PKF Mueller on “Managing Your Business through a Crisis: 6 Steps to Success” to learn from big companies and the tough times they faced.

Planning for different scenarios

Planning is about thinking of different possibilities and testing how your business would handle them. You can’t just think about one thing happening; you need to be ready for lots of different situations. This way, you can make plans and use your resources in the best way. Stress testing means pretending bad or extreme things happen to see how you’d deal with them, so you can be ready in case they do.

If you’re having trouble finding time to work on long-term projects like this, my time allocation calculator will figure out when and who can work on it for your company.

Keeping business going

Making sure your business can keep going even during tough times is a big part of resilience and risk management. This means making plans to keep things running when there are big problems. Doing this helps your business get back on track fast and keeps the bad effects on your workers and customers as small as possible.

To do this, you need to know which parts of your business are important and make sure you have backups for them. You also need to give clear instructions to your workers, so they know what to do during a crisis. Test these plans regularly to make sure they work well.

Read this article from IT Convergence that talks about “5 Key Strategies” for keeping your business going. Use the ideas for your business and start protecting your team and clients today.

Having backup skills

One important thing for building resilience is having backup plans for when things go wrong. Sometimes people might leave their jobs suddenly, or they might not be able to work for a while. It’s important to have other people who can do their jobs if that happens. You can do this by making sure your employees can do more than one job or making sure different people on your team know how to do important things. This way, your business won’t be in trouble if something bad happens.

Even better, try to create a culture where people keep learning and share what they know so your business can keep going no matter what.

Are you ready to be resilient?

We never know what problems will arise. But if you make plans to deal with them and conquer risk management, your business will be ready to face anything. Start planning now, so you can come out even stronger when tough times hit.

Jennifer Goldman, CFP®, is the founder and CEO of Andover, MA-based My Virtual COO. Jen brings 30 years of experience transforming over 1,000 service businesses to thrive. Her mission is to increase the health of businesses so they can provide knowledge and choices to more employees and consumers.

A message from Advisor Perspectives and VettaFi: To learn more about this and other topics, check out our full schedule of upcoming CE-approved virtual events.

Read more articles by Jennifer Goldman