Navigating the Downturn: Resilient Enterprises are Vulnerability-Centric
Nervous about the current economic climate? Being nervous does not put the brain in shape to generate solutions. On the contrary, worry and fear shut down the fresh thinking needed.
On the other hand, the habit of seeking to address vulnerability is a time-honored leaders’ practice [here’s a lovely example]. Not only is it good commercial process; it’s an excellent antidote to fear. Brain juices flow when peoples see opportunities to help others. By leading employees to focus on shifting Customer vulnerabilities, leaders can both stimulate ingenuity and be rewarded with new solutions and improved morale.
No matter the size of your business, doing what you’ve been doing is not likely to work. Build resilience by focusing on new vulnerabilities - your own and others’. Sound counter-intuitive? Navigating this new economic reality requires creating new kinds of exchanges. The richest exchanges address both parties’ concerns. Those concerns are centered on vulnerability.
How are your most valued trading partners – key segments - viewing the vulnerabilities they face? Stay close to their thinking. Ask questions about how they see their world and what they’re anticipating. And treat them like partners by asking for advice about how your business might serve others like them – you may be surprised at how good their advice is and how much they like giving it.
Replace your nervousness with curiosity about how to serve. And stimulate others’ curiosity; opening new questions breeds the Neuroplasticity that will enable you, employees and customers to respond well to market shifts. And it will strengthen relationships all around, setting the context for more value to be generated.
By listening deeply and often to how key segments are thinking and re-thinking their vulnerabilities, it’s easy to move to:
- How might you add fresh value?
- What might you invent to make their prospects brighter?
High-performing business cultures are based on this practice. Knowing that they cannot control peoples’ interpretations and choices, leaders ensure that employees, customers and vendors step into inquiry. It makes everyone smarter.
Already doing that? Please share.
Not nimble enough to do that? Want a manual? C.K. Prahalad’s book, The New Age of Innovation is excellent.
Filed under Leading Through Inquiry | Comments (5)
5 Responses to “Navigating the Downturn: Resilient Enterprises are Vulnerability-Centric”
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I just stopped by your blog and thought I would say hello. I like your site design. Looking forward to reading more down the road.
Hi Marsha,
I am living proof that curiosity – and satisfying it for your clients – is a wonderful leverage for business. My question for you is this:
How do we move large enterprises to adapt to changing environments quickly enough to help in their most vulnerable times? For example, my recent experience with the peanut butter scare (see: http://janetleejohnson.com) may have actually been able to prevent millions of losses, yet it’s hard to find folks who care enough to listen!
How do you motivate action from a place of fear or vulnerability – when the brain juices are stopped?
In the financial services industry there exists an unbridged gap between the service provider and the end user. Investors watching account values evaporate are experiencing a crisis of confidence and are at a loss of what course of action to take. The result is the choice of inaction or worse, panic and capitulation. Too often a recipe for faliure. This may result in a generation of non-investors who return to the days of “hiding it under the bed”. However,there exists at this juncture an opportunity to bring value to this growing population if providers look beyond the bottom line. Developing true strategies for investors that are, like good medicine, more holisitc in nature.
Kelly,
I agree that this is important leadership opportunity. What are the questions you want people to be asking? Shout them out – point the way
Hi Janet,
I likem your question, “How do you motivate action from a place of fear or vulnerability – when the brain juices are stopped?”
Two moves leaders can make to take people beyond Flight, Fight, or Freeze:
1) Our brains are wired via 350,000 generations of community cooperation – looking out for one another.
Leaders can provide an antidote to fear by putting peoples’ attention on their neighbors’ vulnerability. They’ll respond with ingenuity – like people do in a hurricane
2) The brain likes questions. The right question will get peoples’ juices flowing.
What question do you want leaders to be asking in the wake of this mess? Put it out there – you may be surprised at how clever people become in response to a juicy question.