3 Pillars to Boost your Business.

A short guide for businesses who are navigating uncertainty.

I seem to be talking about this topic in many different spaces at the moment, the notion that doing business in a rapidly changing world is a rollercoaster a lot of businesses are not enjoying. Global uncertainty and geo politics feels unstable, climate change is feeling more real, digital development and AI feels like a race you don't feel trained for.

I wrote a whole MBA module on just this and so could go on for weeks about how to create resilience and agility into your business strategy, but for today, I want to focus on 3 core elements of your business that you can focus on to leverage stabilising tactics in the day to day.

These 3 pillars are the way I work with businesses because they are repeatedly the elements that both make business feel great again and also win customers.

Let's dive in.

1. PEOPLE - in a world of AI, connectivity and automated systems, the value of human is going through the roof. People power is here to stay. You can think about the people in your business from many lenses, from employees and associates to your customers. Never before has it been more important to understand the people around you at a deeper level and with a more discerning approach, way beyond what their productivity is or how they will spend. Here are some areas where you can deep dive into how your business is valuing the magical nuance of people:

   1. How well do you really understand the human experiences of those who work for you, with you and buy from you?

   2. Does your business have a people first approach that inspires, supports, gives back and listens?

   3. How is your business actively engaging with people in and around the business? Feedback, listening, asking, surveying, collaborating?

   4. Where does your business spend most of its time - on systems and solutions or people and relationships?

   5. How is the wellbeing of all the people in and around your business? Do you know, understand or even help with that?

   6. What systems do you have in place that consistently seek out the untapped wisdom and potential of the people in and around your business? Insights, knowledge, ideas or entrepreneurial thinking?

   7. As you and your business changes, how are you bringing along the people around you? Do they understand your mission? Do they believe in what your business does?

2. PLACES - no business works in isolation. Even an internationally focussed, online business, based on an industrial estate is place based and in a world that is focussed on being connected through the clouds, we can forget this crucial pillar as a stabilisier and a foundation. Your place might be in community, locality or on a high street. Leveraging community collaboration, giving back and the power of collective thinking is a great way to steady the ship right now. Here are some questions to ask yourself about how place is featuring in your resilience strategy:

   1. How does your business reach out to its surrounding community (real or virtual) to engage ideas, find connection or share thinking?

   2. How is your business investing in the location or the world around it so that people understand your true value?

   3. How is your business giving back to the places it's based to provide hope, energy and innovation?

   4. Are there ways to seek out more local supply chains and support local businesses to innovate & to steady your own eco system from future shocks?

   5. Do you measure the impact you and your business has on the local area? From nature to economic value or from networks to collaborative projects?

3. PLANET - we're all operating our businesses in a world under severe stress. Our next steps are vital if we're to create the kind of stability and predictability we're looking for. From the super simple, like energy pricing stability to the more profound desire to preserve biodiversity or eliminate inequality, how we weave sustainability into all that we do will be the value we're able to maintain now and into the future. Here are some ways you might like to think about bringing your business and the planet closer together:

   1. Is sustainability in your business wider than your ability to keep trading?

   2. Do you consider sustainability in every area of the business or is it still confined to recycling?

   3. How do you integrate sustainable practice with the value you offer your customers?

   4. How can you leverage your business's care for the planet to increase the value to your customers?

   5. How is your brand positioning itself in a future world that is cared for?

   6. Are you regularly using planet friendly activity to save money, increase brand value and attract customers?

I hope that these 3 simple pillars have provided you with some food for thought whil offering a simple way to analyse how you and your business can navigate this world as it changes. All 3 of these factors are central to how you build stability and resilience into what you do. Perhaps more importantly, if you ignore any of them, you're quickly creating more challenge than you need.

About the Author

Emily Whitehead is a business owner of nearly 25 years and has been running her own coaching consultancy for nearly 20. MBA writer and teacher, founder of Simply Club, exec coach and trainer with multiple business schools and national business support programmes, Emily has a wealth of real life and theoretical experience to share with business founders, owners and leaders. You can meet Emily over on LinkedIn too.