Andrew Marsh, chair of Vistage for the North East and Northumberland, NED for numerous businesses and charities; and successful entrepreneur, spends his days helping business leaders achieve goals and find opportunity.
In this article he focuses on resilience, and how not only to build it into a company’s leadership but how to cascade it through the organisation for increased strength and shared vision.
“Leaders today are facing world issue after world issue at the moment, but those who have the right attitude and approach are finding ways forward, ways to grow and even ways to facilitate and achieve positive results.
“To be one of these achievers, it is important to build resilience into your model, focusing on positive drivers and making sure you understand the what if scenarios. Otherwise, the working day becomes all risk registers and unpleasantness, no good for energy, morale or for fostering success.
“The Ukraine and Russia conflict is causing pressure on supply chains, fast on the heels of the impact of the pandemic. We are all aware of energy rates rising at a fast rate of knots, as utility companies across the UK collapse. And of course, interest rates inflating, which is good for savings but not for mortgages, loans and repayments, adding more pressure to the pot. The car market is under huge pressure with a shortage of new vehicles and used vehicle values being extremely inflated. “Historically the typical solution to the weight of these challenges would be for a company to stockpile cash, cut costs, slow investments, and try to ride things out. But if that is the general response, then trade and any chance of prosperity will grind to a halt. Instead, we need to keep sensible amounts of contingency cash deposited in the right place, whilst still investing business, in people and in our future. Resilience takes a long-term view.
“Dr Emma Black, CEO and cofounder of Cascade Cash Management said: “It is sensible right now for a company to protect a percentage of their cash to ensure resilience and longevity. There are choices but you should look for those options offering the best returns and the most advanced depositor protection is the Cascade portal. The unique online platform generates enhanced cash returns and most attractively, includes every single bank and building society providing clients with the maximum protection they can obtain on deposits under the Financial Services Compensation Scheme through spreading cash across multiple banking licences via professional cash management. The service has over 5,500 savings accounts on offer from Instant Access to 5 years. In a nutshell, we are helping create resilience through our mission to make savings simple, helping people and businesses protect their cash and reach their savings goals faster, smarter and happier.”
“Building resilience in your people is also important. One way to do this is to give them access to as many perspectives, insights, tools and options as possible. You can do this through peer groups. Vistage holds members sessions that inject and motivate resilience, help with recognition of opportunity and fine tune the skills needed to deal with conflict, whilst pushing through positive visions. Perfect for leaders, but what about the rest of the team? Vistage also looks after emerging leaders, with a new cohort starting very soon.
“The Experience Bank Group also runs peer groups for all levels with the latest, due to launch in Spring, being for those all-important key managers – mid career high potential individuals. Peter Neal, founder of the part philanthropic enterprise, said: “Peer groups are beginning to be the core to the success of many individual’s careers and to the employer’s success who invest in them. Many suggest they are the future of management and leadership development as they involve working with like-minded people, effectively sharing knowledge, learning skills, finding solutions, and exploring ideas. In times where we are faced with challenges, to have a positive place for individuals to focus on optimism and the future really is critical.”
“In times of uncertainty it has always been business services such as marketing that are the first to go when cutting budgets. But this, as many displayed through the pandemic, is a short-term view as without awareness your sales and positive reputation are likely to grind to a halt. Resilience and future strength through opportunity can only be achieved by being seen and by maximising constructive exposure. James Tenant from Converge supports this thinking:
“Our Converge platform is a leading content tool designed to break the mould of white noise and amplify key messages from users. It leverages content to bigger national and global audiences daily and is ideal for those wanting to expand news reach and announcements. Only launching last year, we have been inundated with agencies and companies wanting to prosper and willing to invest to be seen and heard. This is very positive as only by building a listening and watching business audience, can you further increase a company’s market share.”
“My last tip on building resilience and finding opportunity to move forward is, as well as making sure your company has the right people, make sure it is using the right technology which could save time, money and tick lot of boxes that currently are maybe not done to the best standard. A great example of this is the difference that GUARDIAN® from Plexus Innovation is making in addressing a whole host of business-critical issues for users. Ian Murray, Founder and Managing Director, said:
“GUARDIAN®’s IoT remote technology function includes measurement of temperature, CO2, humidity and water system monitoring and control, enabling insight driven decisions, reliable compliance reporting and alerting to health risks or failing assets that otherwise may not be known about. It brings big changes in the way organisations can significantly improve their business operations whilst reducing risks, costs, waste, and environmental impact. Its’ different applications mean it is more agile than similar products, and can do so much more, for many more industries ensuring continuity, confidence, and resilience.”
“To sum up, resilience equals the ability to go beyond adversity and for many, beyond survive to thrive. It is one of the most important qualities for a leadership team to have and to instil into the ranks from top to bottom and all the way back again. It is not always something that comes naturally, but it can be taught as long there is a vision of what the need and the result is.
