When disaster strikes, some are affected more than others.

We saw this with the pandemic, with local fires and floods, and with the recent Crowdstrike failure. Every organization has exposure to things outside their control. The image of “fragility” seems appropriate to me.

Some people are super-organized and like to put plans in place for every contingency. Great, I suppose, but the Return on Investment can be very low. Most of us don’t have the time (or willpower!) to plan for unlikely things.

So what’s the right balance?

As an example, let’s suppose you own a restaurant. There are a lot of things that could have a huge and immediate impact on your operations:

  • A flood could cause the drains to back up
  • A fire next door could shut you down
  • A burglar could rob you and do lots of damage
  • A truck could crash through your front door
  • A global pandemic could start up

What these all share is that you really can’t do much to prevent them from happening. A few things here and there, I suppose, but so much of this is out of your control. And the probability is low on any of them, so you don’t want to spend too much anxiety on any of these unless you notice something which increases the likelihood.

But what they all share is that one day you’re open, and the next day you’re not. With some likelihood that others share your problem, so you may be able to get more help.

The first thing we think about is what happens to employees. How do they find out? How do we tell them all to not come into work, or to come in expecting something entirely different? How would we help hourly workers with a sudden loss of income?

It’s not really about having a plan for every contingency. Instead, it’s about having the right mindset to quickly adjust when bad things happen.

When the pandemic started, all restaurants were forced to immediately shut down. And we were all scrambling, not knowing how long it might last.

For me, the most surprising thing was how quickly the cities and towns adjusted their regulations. I had NEVER seen a situation where lanes would be taken out of the streets so that people could eat outside. Yet that happened in a matter of weeks, even during winter weather.

Then towns worked hard to put masking and distancing orders in place so that people could eat inside. Inconvenient as heck, sure, but this saved many restaurants.

I have never seen governments work this fast.

We could do this because everybody shared a common experience, which created enough political unity and focus to put it at the top of our agenda. There was an outpouring of positive support for all critical services, which even extended to restaurants.

So we focused and figured it out. And we adjusted as time went on, sharing success stories around the globe. I’ve seen this with fires and floods as well, so it’s about how society responds to the unexpected.

But it’s still good to spend some time thinking about how to respond to unexpected events, even though we don’t know what they’ll be. It might help to create a special “hardship fund.” Or to cross-train people. Or have secondary suppliers for critical items.

It’ll make us much less fragile.