HOW TO MAKE YOUR COMPANY BULLET-PROOF

Posted on Saturday, 25th October - 2014, in HOW TO and ANALOGIES & STORIES and ADVICE & TIPS and INSIGHTS and LATEST NEWS, by Dr Garry Richards OAM FAIM

The vicissitudes of corporate life!

Things change. Markets shift. Regulations proliferate… World trade and economies are complex and often unpredictable.

Modern business is not simple and there are constant “attacks” every day, future business operations and progress is always uncertain.

So what makes things bullet-proof?

Mmm.. and how do you start dealing with a question like that? Maybe we should go to the people who are the experts in making things bullet-proof and see what they have to offer.

In these days of terrorism, bombs and high powered weaponry, making bullet-proof glass has reached new heights of perfection… How do they make something as fragile as glass so powerfully bullet proof?

A single grain of sand fired at a pane of glass can shatter that glass. Yet, built correctly glass can in fact be tough as steel. The clue lies in the basic technique of making bullet proof glass.

Think of each staff member as a single pane of glass… then a problem hits like a bullet!

Can the pane of glass take it without shattering? Well, through training, education and skill development, individual staff members can be strengthened just like a single pane of glass can be made of strengthened chemistry. And that will stop a lot of simple attacks right there…

But if the problem is more powerful, a single pane of strengthened glass will not stop it.

So bullet-proof glass is made of layers of strengthened glass, and the layers are sandwiched with a bonding agent between them and they are not all laid in the same line, but laid on each other from different directions.

Each individual pane (staff member) may still be vulnerable, but if bonding agent (corporate mission, procedures etc.) is flexible and able to adjust to stress, and if the panes are layered differently (diversity of staff, skills and attitudes), then the total piece of glass will be far more likely to be able to deal with the forces impacting on it.

The answer becomes clear… the parallel is a good one!

So how do you make your own company bulletproof?

• Train, develop and strengthen each staff member,
• Bond them with common purpose and effective, flexible, responsive corporate procedures,and
• Make sure there is diversity in styles and thinking

Conclusion

Follow this plan and the team will be much more capable of handling what gets thrown at them. Leave them as single, unreinforced panes and you can expect to have the bullets of life and business penetrating them and the company.