Your business may find itself under pressure due to various challenges in the form of crisis, and when you have a good plan in place, your response has likely been extensively mapped out. This is the front-end work, and what will be left to do in the aftermath of an obstacle is your evaluation of what functioned and to what capacity. This part is crucial for weathering the next storm and making adjustments in your approach.
After the dust has settled, collect as much input, and plot it along a timeline, documenting chronology. Establish a complete picture, and take as much time to assemble this as you can. The more thorough your research, the more accurate any conclusions you make will be, affecting the overall health of your company.
Make A Comparison
Put simply, not all systems were likely affected by the event in question. When you study the results of what happened, make an assessment of what would have happened without the proper defenses in place. Next, compare this projected course with what actually transpired.
Take the difference and trace it back to the safeguards your company had on standby. Be sure to determine where weaknesses exist and bolster these. In addition, see if any affected protocol or resources were at all undermined during the situation and need to be replenished. Examine whether your success would have varied at all by testing to see what damage may have been done had there been slight differences in what happened. If your firm experienced a close call, make sure to protect it against a full-blown failure of operations under similar circumstances.
Evaluate Your Response For Flexibility
It is important to strike a balance between how structurally rigid your supports are and the amount of built-in give. A strategy that can change on short notice also needs to be strong enough to not crumble under pressure. Decide based on the evidence whether your method gave you the room needed to maneuver based on necessity, allowing you to make quick changes.
Adaptability of your ideas can also be prepared ahead of time to an extent. You go back over your policies and write in contingencies and tolerances for future adjustments. It need not be all-inclusive but can provide a solid blueprint at your disposal instead of starting from scratch. Outline all needed operations and the bare minimum needed to run, so you have access to a framework in the event you need to make last minute cuts. Fidelman & Co. have a proven track record helping startups develop their methods for meeting all sorts of challenges based on industry best practices.
Poll Your People
Your customers are the lifeblood of any business, and you can use surveys to see how they believe you weathered the storm. If they felt your response was appropriate, utilize this valuable feedback to engender good client relations going forward. You can also glean useful information from the ways in which people think you went wrong. View everything as a learning tool, and aim to improve where you can. Always view your mistakes as important to your growth.
Another way of doing this is to meticulously analyze your streams of income. Your base will usually speak most loudly through their spending habits. You don’t want to miss this source of intel, and you’ll want to match it up with many points of data to determine what possibly affected what. By tying your revenue spikes and lows to potential causes, you can unlock myriad paths for you to explore to expand your financial viability.
