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“I believe that for every headwind we confront, there’s an equally powerful tailwind to be ridden. The trick is finding it.”.

MUHTAR KENT, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, COCA-COLA

This advice, from Muhtar Kent, sums up the combination of optimism and realism that drive the most successful companies. The challenges we face in business today are immense, complex and unremitting and require a great deal of skill and energy. Tackling them all is certainly not an easy task. However, by equipping ourselves with the right approach and capabilities, we will be better placed to find that powerful tailwind.

“WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN OR WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN’T, YOU’RE RIGHT!”

Henry Ford

This chapter introduces the six techniques for successfully building a business, brand and career. These are the six Rs: Reason, Revenue, Rousers, Reputation, Relationships and Resilience. We will explain why it is important to remember the purpose of the company and to stick to your convictions and never forget the reason you are in business. Generating and maximizing revenues are the engines that drives any business; they are what enable plans to happen. This may seem obvious but time and again, companies do not pay enough attention to these critical aspects of running a business. The impact of inspiring and rousing people cannot be overstated. Motivation, commitment and support, along with an array of other benefits, all spring from this ability. Building relationships underpins every aspect of running a business, from employee engagement to customer retention. As such, it should be an integral part of guiding all business activities and decisions. Companies can rise or fall on the strength of their reputation, and managing this area requires constant vigilance. In these turbulent times, forging resilient companies is now the number one job for all leaders. Most importantly, these six Rs do not operate in isolation. They are complementary; each supports and mutually reinforces the other. Think of them as part of a holistic framework to help you create value, competitive advantage and sustainable growth.

THE SIX Rs EXPLAINED

The following chapters explore the six Rs in detail. Before we embark on that journey, however, it is useful to first have a brief definition of each one.

Reason

The intention and values of a company must be defined clearly. These values and purpose have to be communicated to employees in order to gain commitment and to ensure your people know they are an important part of the company and that its success relies on them. Everyone, at every level, must understand the company’s vision and mission.

Gain commitment for the company’s values: When the intention of the company is shared by its workers, their commitment will go a long way in achieving your objectives. To do this, it is useful to encourage participation and actively seek the opinions and new ideas of your employees at all levels. Motivation strategies and compensation, such as economic incentives, recognition or promotion, will also secure commitment.

Always consider the company’s values and mission at each stage of pursuing goals: Implementing the company’s reason, goals and values is divided into three phases. First, define both the short-term and long-term objectives. Second, communicate the strategic plan to employees so that they understand and share the objectives and so that they will deliver the required results. Third, evaluate and monitor peoples’ alignment to the objectives and take action to realign, if necessary.

SUCCESSFULLY BUILDING A BUSINESS RELIES ON THE SIX Rs: REASON, REVENUE, ROUSERS, REPUTATION, RELATIONSHIPS AND RESILIENCE.

Offer the right product or services: The type of product or services your company offers should complement the reason why it is in business. Similarly, the segments you operate in and the quality of your offer should also fit with your company’s purpose. This ensures that different aspects of your business work together and do not confuse your strategy, your customers or your employees.

Revenue

Revenue covers a variety of company assets, including financial capital, structural capital, and its portfolio of clients. Examples of financial capital are a company’s EBITDA (their Earnings Before Interest, Taxation, Depreciation and Amortization), income and debtors (the money owed to the company). The indicators you choose for assessing the state of revenue will depend on your company’s particular situation. Generally speaking, finance is an excellent indicator of the health of the company. It is not the only indicator of health but it is clearly essential for continued survival and prosperity. In fact, there are many elements to a company’s structural assets, including the firm’s knowledge, information systems, management style and other elements. Essentially, the structural assets are what are left when everyone leaves at the end of the day. They are vital if the firm is to leverage capabilities, intellectual capital and reputation, take advantage of opportunities and provide a solid platform from which to transform an entire company.

Also, the company’s client portfolio should not be overlooked when it comes to assessing revenues. Valuable clients make for a highly valued company. Moreover, if your portfolio of clients is strong, it is a good sign that you are already performing well across all of the six Rs. However, this situation should not breed complacency. Many companies have failed by sticking with a backward-looking, historic approach that favors business as usual, fails to notice signs of change or emerging challenges or simply takes their customers for granted.

Rouser

THE COMPANY’s CLIENT PORTFOLIO SHOULD NOT BE OVERLOOKED WHEN IT COMES TO ASSESSING REVENUES. IF THE PORTFOLIO OF CLIENTS IS STRONG THEN IT IS A GOOD SIGN THAT THE FIRM IS PERFORMING WELL ACROSS ALL OF THE SIX Rs.

Being a rouser means inspiring, motivating and gaining the commitment of people for the company’s mission and objectives. It lies at the heart of leadership because it is about bringing people along with you to achieve the company’s goals. So, what do rousers do and how can they increase commitment to their plans? The answer is by succeeding in several areas.

Focus on achieving results

You should be goal oriented, improve the efficiency of processes and quality of products and services, make sure plans are sustainable and convey the stability of the company to employees. This requires openness, trust and honesty, making the company’s results visible to everyone.

Engage others and gain commitment to achieving common objectives

A key skill for a rouser is to ensure that everyone’s efforts are aligned. For this reason, the global strategy of the company must be accepted at all levels in the organization. The level of commitment among leaders is especially significant here, as they are in positions to influence the efforts and commitment of others. Conversely, leaders are the ones with the greatest capacity to jeopardize plans if they fail to obtain the employees’ commitment for achieving common objectives.

Increase the company’s ability to adapt

As we have already seen, there are two things we can say for certain about the future: it will be different and it will surprise. Companies therefore need to update the way they work and the products and services they deliver. In addition, the lifespan of products and services is becoming increasingly shorter and shorter, requiring companies to innovative more rapidly and be ready to respond immediately to new products from other companies. This means that leaders need to motivate their people to accept change and to reorient to new situations quickly. This is achieved by instilling new behaviors and attitudes into the culture of the organization. Therefore, a rouser should encourage people to be adaptable and they should also empower them to be proactive.

Instill an innovative approach

Rousers are not only innovative themselves: they also encourage others to be innovative. This means keeping an eye on what is happening in the business environment and the world at large. It also involves looking to the future, anticipating trends and identifying and creating opportunities to help the company achieve future success.

Reputation

“TO THINK IS EASY. TO ACT IS DIFFICULT. TO ACT AS ONE THINKS IS THE MOST DIFFICULT.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Reputation is an issue that applies both internally – within the organization – and externally. What employees think of the company influences their level of motivation, engagement and commitment. Externally, your reputation among customers, suppliers, retailers, the media, government and public bodies will all affect both short- and long-term profitability. Factors that come into play include: people’s perception of your products and services, the company’s perceived ‘trajectory’ (whether it is felt to be going in the right direction), word-of-mouth, as well as other sources of influence and information. An excellent reputation provides the organization with considerable competitive advantage as it strongly influences customers’ preferences. In addition, a strong reputation increases the value of shares and the firm’s appeal to investors.

Although a reputation is fairly consistent, an organization can have different reputations with different segments or groups. These include:

•   Employees. The reputation or ‘employer brand’ that the company has with its own people greatly influences their productivity. In addition, employees with a positive view of the company have much greater confidence in the future, which in turn improves employee retention. Of course the conditions of work, compensation and recognition are all important in this regard, but other factors matter too – such as the desire to work for a company that is valued by others outside the organization and, increasingly, that it has a sound reputation for corporate social responsibility.

  

AN EXCELLENT REPUTATION PROVIDES THE ORGANIZATION WITH CONSIDERABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE AS IT STRONGLY INFLUENCES CUSTOMERS’ PREFERENCES. IN THE WORDS OF WARREN BUFFETT, “IT TAKES TWENTY YEARS TO BUILD A REPUTATION AND FIVE MINUTES TO RUIN IT. IF YOU THINK ABOUT THAT, YOU’LL DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY.”.

•   Clients. If a company is valued by its clients it increases the likelihood of retaining them as customers for existing products, and it gives the opportunity to sell further products. Also, satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your company to others. Reputation is particularly important in the service industry.

  

•   Investors. Reputation is keenly watched by current and prospective investors. Investors will be more willing to invest in a company that has their confidence, and this is invariably because of a strong reputation in several areas, including popularity among customers and clients, vision, stability, appropriate attitude to risk, integrity and sound leadership.

  

•   Opinion leaders. In the words of the legendary investor Warren Buffett, “It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” This is never truer than in the case of opinion formers and influencers. Given their powerful position to influence others, it is essential that an organization maintains a good reputation with them.

Relationships

All business relationships, both internal and external, are connected with each other. In terms of the whole company, you could no more separate the parts than you could separate a stem from a flower – the whole plant clearly needs both parts. The quality of relationships is a very real asset of the company. The learning, generation of knowledge, improvements and innovations that result from good relationships all contribute to the bottom line.

Internal relations take place between people at all levels within the company. When there is rapport, trust and agreement between employers and employees, it improves the quality of internal relationships and increases the flow of communication.

External relations with clients, suppliers, public and governmental bodies, shareholders, influencers and the media help with creating and sharing knowledge, detecting new opportunities, innovating, improving products and reputation and building customer loyalty. Relations can be at the institutional and group level but they often operate at the individual person-to-person level as well. Relationship capital considerably increases the value of the company.

Resilience

Resilience is the capacity of an organization to respond quickly and effectively to opportunities, threats and changes. Ideally, resilience enables a company to take control and direct its own future before problems occur.

Learning is a key part of resilience, as the lessons from experiencing difficulties will strengthen your ability to tackle future problems. Resilience needs to be instilled throughout the organization: from its culture and capabilities to its operational decisions and strategic development.

RESILIENCE IS THE CAPACITY OF AN ORGANIZATION TO RESPOND QUICKLY AND EFFECTIVELY TO OPPORTUNITIES, THREATS AND CHANGES.

Two key questions can be used to evaluate an organization’s resilience:

•   Are the right procedures in place before problems occur? It is important to develop a business continuity plan to ensure that critical functions adapt successfully to change. Having the right procedures in place and ensuring that they are understood and followed will help to maintain stability, avoid panic and give employees the ability to suggest new ideas.

  

•  Do you have a culture that emphasizes overcoming problems and that encourages continuous improvement? The number of crises that an organization successfully overcomes will affect its level of resilience. Organizations with a high level of resilience develop a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, which helps for resolving future problems and for confronting new challenges.

CONNECTING THE SIX Rs

Figure 3.1: Causal diagram

In figure 3.1 we can see the existing relationships between the different elements. This highlights the fact that the six Rs are best viewed as a whole; they form a complete tool box for running a business. This holistic approach is necessary for dealing with the complexity of doing business in a fast-changing and diverse world. While teamwork has been the hallmark of successful businesses in the last twenty years, such efforts are merely the forerunner of the next round in commercial enterprise. The future requires us to act holistically: no ifs or buts. This task is not an option, it is essential. Survival depends on it as does prosperity. We shall come back to this point in Chapter 10 when we discuss our our THAP framework – how to Think Holistically, Act Personally.

SUCCEEDING WITH THE SIX Rs

The six Rs provide a great way to assess the health of your business and the areas of strength and weakness, but for this approach to succeed you need to look at each element in greater detail, something we do in the following chapters. For now, one question dominates: what are the implications of the six Rs for you, your team and your business?

“WHERE THERE IS AN OPEN MIND, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A FRONTIER.”

Charles F. Kettering

With good reason

There is a very good reason why we start with Reason: it underpins everything else – all activities, all strategies, how stakeholders view us, employee engagement and customer loyalty. Our values and purpose should permeate throughout the organization. Employee engagement depends on it and your reputation lives or dies because of it. The reach of your purpose and corporate values is immense, and they have the power to deliver profitable growth or ignominious demise. Customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders will assess what you are offering and judge you accordingly.

As we shall see, what you stand for, as a company, has a critical impact on your fortunes. News travels fast and it may not be the news that you were hoping for. Success demands that we anticipate and stay ahead of ideas and trends. We must remain alert to what matters to customers and adapt accordingly. It is not enough to have an idea of what we value, it is important for these values to coincide with the values that accord with the values of the times. I do not mean to suggest that we should be manipulative, since genuine beliefs are the hallmark of successful companies; rather, I am suggesting that we should evaluate the situation, reassess our values and consider what matters to people – employees, customers and to the world. As we acquire new ideas our perceptions and beliefs change. We should take a big picture view: the world is changing and we should be on the same page and orient our businesses to account for new ideas, new thinking and new demands.

A company’s mission is the focal point of all business activities. It is what drives motivation and commitment; it is what draws customers to your brand. While values and mission statements must be genuine, they must also be responsive to change. After all, business is a total, all-consuming enterprise. As such, it is easy to see how important it is to have your company’s values and purpose influence every other part of your business. This focus is critical to keeping your company on track. By focusing on your goals, and assuring the commitment of your people to them, you will be better placed to keep your company on the trajectory that will realize these goals. To maintain the course you have set, communicating these ideas to your people and securing buy-in is crucial. This is not easy: it demands a great deal of energy and acumen, but the rewards are similarly great.

Our ambitions for our companies are rooted in our values and beliefs. These are what direct the company’s route to success. In the past, we may have focused exclusively on generating profits at all cost. Today, we face a very different scenario: profits result from having the right values. Without the right values, companies will miss the mark and suffer accordingly.

Companies need to encourage participation amongst employees and current and potential customers. This will help to secure employee commitment and generate innovative ideas that could take your company further. Given the impact of your motives on reputation, you should make sure that everything your company does accurately portrays your company in the way that you want. After all, reason supports the other six Rs and the other six Rs support it. This is understandable, as reason is the spark that ignites all other activities.

Re-energizing revenues

Nothing else the business does will matter if revenue is not put front and center in business plans and operations. All business leaders know that generating, maintaining and protecting revenue streams are what lie at the heart of strategy. This is easier said than done, as the difficulty lies in knowing how to achieve these goals. The six million dollar question is: how can we make sure that revenue enables growth? The answer is look to the six Rs: revenue supports company goals but how we execute policy, operations and strategy will affect the level of revenue.

“THE ENEMY OF THE TRUTH IS VERY OFTEN NOT THE LIE – DELIBERATE, CONTRIVED, AND DISHONEST – BUT THE MYTH: PERSISTENT, PERSUASIVE, AND UNREALISTIC.”

John F. Kennedy

Adding value and increasing revenue depends on our ability to adapt to changing circumstances – any company enduring the tumult of the past few years will appreciate this basic, if unwelcome, fact. The unprepared will struggle to survive, as business-as-usual is now a fossilized concept. By the same token, companies that are alert to signs of change will be able to respond and adapt to both current and potential changes, gaining the necessary competitive advantage to secure revenues for further growth. Revenue is a factor that must be seen in terms of both the present and the future – also, reputation from the past will undoubtedly impact revenue in other time frames.

Looking to the future is the key to revenue: it is a world of opportunities and threats; it provides the stage upon which we can act out our hopes. We need to detect signs of change and identify trends, in order to take control of our future. This often demands a break from the past, as what worked in the past may not apply today and will almost certainly not apply in the future. Far from allowing fate to be forced upon you, increasing revenue is a question of market awareness, skilled entrepreneurship and self-determination. Taking control is essential and requires fact finding, fine-tuning the company’s approach and winning the support of others in the company. Companies are, ideally, aiming to lead change rather than follow it. Basically, we need to re-examine the factors that affect revenue.

Chapter 5 about revenues explores what we need to do to keep our companies on the road to building long-term growth. We will look at a number of issues, including Blue Ocean Strategy, the Star Model, value creation, exploiting adjacencies, creating and entering new markets and how to quantify change. Growing revenues requires a rigorous, analytical, challenging and creative approach throughout the organization and toward markets, competitors and the world at large. In essence, we need to monitor, measure and innovate. Critically, we need a particular mindset: to think outside the box, be ready to challenge assumptions and be adaptable. As we shall see, two key aspects of generating revenues are having a flexible working environment that encourages innovation and ideas, and aligning the entire company to achieve corporate goals.

Rousers: energizing the organization

Rousers are pivotal to a company’s success, as they’re the ones who lead, motivate, inspire, rally and facilitate. Good leaders motivate people and gain their commitment to goals; they, in turn, promote these skills in others as these skills are required at all levels in an organization. Being calm and balanced and having huge reserves of energy and personal strength are necessary attributes. Such individuals challenge ideas and processes, encourage innovative thinking, empower others, shake things up, focus on the long-term, inspire everyone and draw people together.

“THE MOST SERIOUS MISTAKES ARE NOT BEING MADE AS A RESULT OF WRONG ANSWERS. THE TRULY DANGEROUS THING IS ASKING THE WRONG QUESTION.”

Peter Drucker

Every strategy and ultimately, all operations, depend on people. Therefore, how leaders lead makes an incredible difference to a company’s future. Ethics, openness, empathy and integrity figure prominently, since people will not follow someone they do not trust or a leader that does not care. If you passionately believe in your plans for the company, you are more likely to get others to share your enthusiasm. Essentially, you should be a good role model for others. In addition, people have to have confidence in the leader’s ability to deliver.

Successful companies instill all these attributes into the organization’s culture and are committed to developing people, improving processes and stretching everyone to achieve more. In particular, we will look at the differences between a transactional approach and a transformational approach to leadership, negotiation and motivation. Different situations call for different styles and can lead to very diverse outcomes. The advantage of a transformational approach is that the consequences are far reaching, improving the sense of working together toward shared aims, energizing and motivating people and improving performance.

A CORE SKILL OF A ROUSER IS THEIR ABILITY TO ENGAGE EMPLOYEES. THEY CREATE A POSITIVE BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT, WHERE PEOPLE ARE EMPOWERED AND WORK WELL TOGETHER, SUPPORTING EACH OTHER.

A core skill of a rouser is their ability to engage employees. This person creates a positive business environment where people are empowered and work well together, supporting each other. This is particularly important during periods of change or when difficulties arise. By bringing people along with them, rousers strengthen the company’s ability to forge a successful future. In turbulent times with such rapidly changing markets, this is more important than ever.

Reputation: essential for strong brands and sustained success

Fortunes can rise or fall due to reputation so it is hardly surprising that reputation management is now a major part of strategic development and risk management. The business environment is constantly changing, often rapidly so, with opportunities and threats peppering the landscape. Also, the ubiquity of social networking sees news, including opinions of your products and company, spreading rapidly through markets and around the globe. This situation means that companies have to manage their reputations carefully – very carefully.

There are many aspects to managing reputation, as it is vulnerable from all sides. It can be enhanced or diminished by actions at every level, from corporate values and strategy through competitors and market changes to processes and trustworthiness. Leaders need to address issues across the board, in all activities, to ensure two things: that nothing damages reputation and that everything is leveraged to build it. Clearly, reputation can only be managed holistically, with reference to the whole company.

Any approach to managing reputation has to identify the key internal and external stakeholders, which can include everyone from consumers and suppliers to employees and the media. It is important not to have too narrow a focus as stakeholders come in all shapes and sizes and any oversights can have disastrous results. A company’s reputation radar will undoubtedly have many stakeholders on its screen.

In the past, the assessment of reputation was too often an afterthought in business planning. Today, many businesses have improved their reputation management but there is still room for considerable improvement. It is not enough to look to the bottom line and, when the profit for a particular product looks decent, pat ourselves on the back for a job well done, assuming we have done a good job on the reputation front. This turns the situation backward and it misses the complexity and subtleties involved. Reputation does not exist in isolation: it must be an integral part of strategy development and all operational and marketing decisions. As such, traversing this new reputation landscape requires us to be proactive, vigilant and analytical. Any factor that occupies such a pivotal space in strategy must be measurable. Quantifying such a broad, varied and intangible asset has always been difficult. Later we shall look at how to measure and manage reputation effectively.

Reputation underpins success and its effects are far reaching. Creating and protecting such a powerful aspect of the business requires us to use all six Rs to greatest effect – otherwise it will be: easy come, easy go. Holistic business is not a passing fad, it is here to stay and reputation management is a case in point: our six Rs come together to bolster reputation and reputation, in turn, supports them. Here it is wise to remember that reputations are earned: they are given to us by others. Everything the company does will ultimately have an impact on people’s perception of our company. Today, people have unparalleled access to information and the opinions of others. So by way of warning, it is increasingly hard for any company to hide unpalatable facts, which makes being genuine in the pursuit of building a brand all the more important. In particular, brand values don’t simply apply to a product, they apply to a whole company. This brings us to one last point: a reputation will only be strong and durable if it is genuinely true. This is why corporate values are the cornerstone of reputation – they have earned their place.

Building business relationships

Business is about people. This automatically puts managing relationships at the forefront of business activities. Moreover, the recent, seemingly exponential growth in the variety and number of points of contact with others has not only catapulted this task onto the business scene, it has made it more complicated and more important than ever before.

Success depends on the quality of all your relationships – both internal and external. The list of people and groups a company has to consider is exhaustive. From employees, distributors and suppliers to customers, opinion leaders and the media, businesses must manage a full range of relationships, each with different needs and nuances.

While other issues are similarly important, nothing matters more than employee relationships. Being able to attract and retain the best talent will directly affect your bottom line. As a result, the company’s leaders need to work hard at developing relationships with their people, the relationships employees have with each other and how everyone relates to people outside the company – clearly, no small task.

Companies need to overcome any barriers that inhibit good working relationships. While competitiveness is an essential part of survival in the markets it can be counterproductive in internal relationships. Breaking down rivalries and getting people to open up and trust each other is an important first step. A significant way to do this is to make people feel connected to others and to the company. This connection is the key to building trust, confidence and teamwork. More significantly, it provides the camaraderie, strength and resolve that will carry a company through difficult times.

It is easy, in rapidly changing times to become out of step with developments and this also applies to relationship management. This is because the workforce and the workplace are not static. For example, globalization and technological and demographic changes have radically altered the dynamics of the working environment, and companies need to adapt their processes and thinking to keep pace with these changes. Moreover, the nature of the workplace is changing. It is flatter, and people often have different motivations and different ideas about how they would prefer to work. In Chapter 8 on relationships we look in detail at this new working environment; how companies can benefit and how productivity can be raised. You will gain commitment, attract the best candidates, improve retention, improve collaboration and release a large amount of potential that will drive innovation and profitability further by not being restrained by past conventions and by offering your people the right environment and incentives.

Trust lies at the heart of building relationships. It gives us confidence that promises and commitments can be relied upon, and this matters for both internal and external relationships. Externally, relationship marketing is an invaluable means of building trust in order to cultivate better relationships with customers (and other stakeholders), precisely because it focuses on retaining them as loyal customers over time rather than on selling one product in a one-off fashion. Now, community marketing is an exciting extension to this approach, with the capacity to generate a large population of people dedicated to your brand. To tap into this, it is essential to utilize networking to its full potential. Identify the key opinion leaders and engage them in order to influence others.

When it comes to building relationships, if there is one thing that companies need to consider it is this: we need to look beyond immediate transactions and develop an ongoing dialogue capable of forging relationships that matter. Competition is fierce and can easily blindside the unprepared and the unfit. Competitive advantage will be gained by those who have formed relationships strong enough to weather any storm – those with deep reserves of relationship capital.

Resilience – vital for adaptability, agility and reinvention

“YESTERDAY’S HOME RUNS DON’T WIN TODAY’S GAMES.”

Babe Ruth

Resilience is now an essential part of business strategy and operations. Adaptability is a major consideration, as the world is an unpredictable and changeable place. Companies need to evaluate their capabilities and address any weaknesses. They need to prepare and be ready to take advantage of opportunities as well as to insulate themselves from shocks. The chapter on resilience will explore the importance of this and how to build resilient organizations.

Inertia is anathema to resilience. We have to constantly look for changes and signs of opportunities and threats, and respond accordingly. Being proactive, dynamic, alert and flexible are essential. We must even be prepared to completely change our business models. This requires a root and branch assessment and overhaul. Companies cannot afford weak spots: resilience is a company-wide occupation. Planning ahead and putting the right processes in place will enable your company to respond swiftly to changes or threats and put you in a position to lead change. In particular, the best source of resilience is your people. People matter for many reasons - for example, their engagement and energy drive the business forward - but they are an essential source of innovation.

Everyone should be on the same page and they should pull together. This is especially the case during difficulties. The turbulence of current markets brings many opportunities and risks, and companies need to call upon all their resources to navigate successfully through such uncharted waters.

Leaders need huge reserves of energy and determination, they need to be able to stay calm, focused, positive and goal oriented; they need to be challenging, forward thinking, open to new ideas and innovative – and they should encourage these attributes in others. The problems that companies face are way beyond the tasks of one individual to deal with, making teamwork and collaboration particularly important. Without question, experience is the best teacher. Anyone who has gone through difficulties can take this very steep learning curve and apply it to future situations. Given the magnitude of problems that you can be faced with, a key part of resilience is having confidence in your abilities.

Strong corporate values make a huge difference to a company’s resilience, as they are the building blocks of rallying people to the same cause and drawing people together during times of change. Also, boldness and imagination are required attributes. Awareness of what is happening in the markets is essential, as action is often time sensitive – slow responders can be severely punished. However, it is also important to remember that resilience also includes the potential to make a comeback even when the odds are against you or when you have been slow on the uptake. This is when having a ‘never say never’ mindset is useful. If you are determined, it can be possible to turn situations around. As we shall see, as Archimedes intimated, it is all a question of leveraging the right things to obtain the desired result. And this leads us to the most basic realization: the main source of resilience is people. People are the reason companies succeed: get that right and you will weather any storm that comes your way.

The following chapters will look in detail at each of the six Rs in turn: Reason, Revenues, Rousers, Reputation, Relationships and Resilience, and highlight how they work together. When reading about each one of them, bear in mind how each of the six Rs supports the others. Working together, the six Rs are much stronger and can build an organization that grows success upon success.

The past few years have certainly been tumultuous and many companies have responded by cutting back and curtailing ambitions – and are also still nursing their wounds. Yet what sort of future is this approach likely to lead to? After all, it is often said that no one ever cut their way to growth. One thing is clear: what matters in good times and bad is a clear sense of purpose – a reason – and that is the focus for the next chapter.