Resilient

-Resilient-  when something  is strong and able to recover from

damage quickly, call it resilient. If you're rough on your toys, the
ones that don't break are resilient. Formed from the Latin verb
resilīre "to leap back," a resilient person is able to recover from an
illness or a bad experience quickly.
-Resilience is the ability to learn from your setbacks and mistakes.
A resilient small business owner  learns how to turn mistakes into
opportunities. They learn to look past the immediate setbacks and
keep their eyes firmly on the long-term goal.
CHARACTERISTICS OF A RESILIENT SMALL BUSINESS OWNER:

1. An innovator

Thinking like an innovator is key for any small business leader. You
have to be ready and willing to go ‘off-plan’.

The innovator mindset is all about being willing to enter new scenarios,
learn from them and create solutions based on these learnings.

Companies who stuck to the systems and processes they already had in
place, found it difficult to adapt and focus on what was really needed.

This year has proven that ‘agility’ and ‘adaptability’ are no longer values
that companies can just write on the walls in their office, they are a
necessity.

2. Moves fast (but make sure you’ve got the fundamentals right)

The digital transformation roadmap has changed dramatically. When

any crisis hits, speed of solution becomes paramount.
One thing that came out of this current crisis is that businesses no
longer have the luxury of waiting to overhaul and implement a long term
technology strategy.

The current crisis showed us that business leaders were able to cut
through the layers of bureaucracy and enable remote working almost
overnight. Customers have told us what was previously taking three
years to implement is now taking three weeks.

Small and growing businesses have an advantage here as they are

usually more agile. The key is ensuring your business is set up so that it
is easy to adopt new technology safely and securely. McKinsey says
that all businesses should act like a tech company and take a ‘platform’
approach  rather than a ‘system’ approach.

3. Embraces and enables flexibility

The impact of COVID-19 will stretch well beyond the current situation.
Workers across the country have embraced working from home and
while some will return to the office, this remote work experiment has
given many businesses, and individuals, the confidence to work
wherever they want.

In fact, a recent study of New Zealanders found that 89 per cent wanted

to continue working from home post-lockdown, at least part-time.

Although 38 per cent of those surveyed stated that they had never
worked from home prior to the global pandemic, 66 per cent of people
found it “easy or somewhat easy” to adapt, with 82 per cent saying they
felt they had the right resources to do their job, although only 17 per
cent had all of those resources provided by their employer.

While the debate on whether in-person or remote working is best will

continue, clever business leaders will listen to their employees and
embrace a hybrid way of working. They will empower their employees to
stay connected, productive and motivated across all working
environments.

The small businesses that successfully transitioned to remote working

during the pandemic did so by bridging the gap between the collective
office and the home office through creating a unified environment that
enables employees to be productive and connected wherever they are.
 4. Listens to his/her employees

There are two interesting themes that have emerged during this time.
The first is that employees wanted to use technology that was as user-
friendly as the technology they used for their social life. The second was
that the line between work and social became blurred. We found
businesses simply couldn’t control their employees' technology choices
and were often too slow to offer them alternatives.

We know that employees adopting their own technology has its

challenges. The opportunity many of our customers found was to
embrace the fact they can’t be a gatekeeper and instead adopt a
technology strategy based on user preference. So, rather than fighting
their employees and locking them into a strict system, they are
empowered to be productive while doing so safely and securely in
partnership with us.

Ultimately, Zoom has faced the same challenges as everyone in the past
six months – perhaps even more. In the first quarter of this year, we
went from 10 million to 300 million meeting participants a day. This
massive up-tick in users came with its own set of challenges.

Not just from a technology development side, we also had to embrace

the hybrid office culture for our 2,800 plus employees worldwide.

In many ways, this has made us a more resilient business. Only by

embracing a fast paced, innovative mindset and listening to our
employees, customers and community have we ensured our business
will survive, and thrive now and in the future.

Small business owners, leaders and decision makers have an

opportunity to embrace the learnings from this crisis and build stronger
businesses because of it.
Staying positive from one crisis to another – the
story of Triple L

Hazel and Roberto Cabe managed a one-hectare

banana plantation in the municipality of Quinapondan. In
2016, under the name Triple L, they experimented with
home-based processing of banana chips with just 50
kilos of bananas, worth about €30. One year after the
production of their first experimental batch, and as their
product gained popularity in the neighbourhood, the
Cabes decided to set-up a small production facility. They
purchased bananas from local farmers, who were happy
to have a steady buyer for their products. Gradually, the
business grew, and the couple soon had to take on
additional employees to keep up with the rising demand.

In 2017, as part of PIN’s ESIP project, Hazel received

training in product development, business management,
marketing, and other business-related topics. PIN
connected the Cabes to a variety of microfinance
institutions and new potential buyers. In 2019, with
support from PIN, the couple signed a large contract with
a distributor to 190 outlets, mostly supermarkets in the
country’s capital, Manila. They also attracted an investor
willing to invest in a second production facility. By the
end of 2019, they were processing two-and-half tonnes
of bananas on a monthly basis, with a value of
approximately €9,000. With construction of the second
facility underway, the Cabe’s future looked promising.
Then, on Christmas Eve 2019, Eastern Samar was again
hit by a large typhoon. Though the death toll of 50 was
not comparable to that of Yolanda, typhoon Ursula
completely wiped out the banana farms in the province.
Hazel had to be creative, and bought more expensive
bananas from Davao on the island of Mindanao, more
than 400 kilometres away. Though the costs were far
higher than buying the bananas locally, at least
production could restart. Eventually, Hazel found
cheaper bananas from Leyte province, which is closer
than Davao.
However, just when things were looking up, the COVID-
19 pandemic began. As Triple L sells most of its
products to Manila, the lockdown of the island had
devastating effects. Transport of fresh bananas from
Leyte to Samar and banana chips from Samar to Manila
became impossible and, as the shelf life of banana chips
is relatively short, Triple L was forced to sell much of its
stock on the local market for far less than it was worth.
Even so, much of the company’s stock was lost. Cut off
from both her suppliers as well as her customers, Hazel
had no option but to close down operations and send her
21 employees home. It wasn’t until mid-June, with the
partial easing of transport restrictions and the first
banana harvest in Samar, that she managed to restart
production on a smaller scale. She also explored selling
her products online, but with limited success.
Despite the impacts of both a typhoon and a pandemic,
Hazel is optimistic about her future. She has proven to
be a strong businessperson and is sure that the market
will return. She has revived her Facebook page for online
sales, and is contracting with various courier services to
ship the company’s products to different parts of the
Philippines.
One important lesson Hazel learned the hard way is that
to survive future external shocks, she should become
less dependent on one key buyer and distributor. To this
end, she found a new distributor in August to cover new
parts of the country, and she has negotiated a more
profitable two-year contract.