Four Ways An Occasional Disruption Might Actually Be Good for Us

Hello, this is Wayne Rivers at The Family Business Institute. Thanks for tuning in. Please click on our social media icons and
please give us the benefit of your thinking in the comment section below.

This week, I want to talk about why an occasional disruption might actually be good for us. It's kind of hard to think as
unsettled as things have been over the last 10 to 12 weeks that this actually might have a bright side, but I believe that it
does in four specific ways. Now no one would want to be in a constant state of disruption or a constant state of crisis or
anything else. I worked with a guy once and there are just certain people that seem to be surrounded by drama and that
was his nature. Every day was a new crisis, little things, I can't find my pen, little things would get blown up into crisis. It
was exhausting. So, we can't live in a disruptive environment continually. It just consumes too much mental energy. So,
thank goodness that we're not always that way.

But I do think there are four reasons why the occasional disruption might be good for us. The first one is people. If this
whole pandemic business did one thing, it made it crystal clear that all of us as leaders need to focus on our people and
our members were tremendous. They went the extra mile to make sure that their people were safe at work, getting to
and from work, working from home, et cetera. They really focused on people. And that old cliché about your biggest asset
is your people. I mean, come on. That is absolute truth. And this thing sort of zeroed in and amplified that point for
everyone.

The second thing is collaboration and interdependence. So, in life sometimes it's, I look after my little patch over here and
you look after your little patch over there, but this has taught us the value of coming together as a team and working in a
high-pressure environment to problem solve very quickly. And so, whereas normally we might be working kind of remote
from one another, this caused everybody to get their leadership teams and their best thinkers together and map out
solutions on the fly quickly in a very rapidly changing environment. And so, it just amplified how important collaboration
is. And it also magnified how interdependent we are on one another in our teams.

The third thing is mission. I hope that this period of unsettledness has caused you to rethink your mission because whether
it's an economic recession or whether it's a situation like with the pandemic; your mission is too important to be derailed
by current events. And so hopefully you've gone back and really zeroed in on your mission and committed to heart and
mind and had your people do the same thing so that you're all rallying around the same central point. Now we condensed
our mission to make it even simpler. I mean, it's so incredibly simple. It's ‘We build better contractors.’ It's so simple a 12
year old could remember it. But it's really helped by having it that simple and that concise and that brief. It's helped all of
us focus on why we come here every day or how we worked from home or whatever we happen to be doing right now,
the mission is what it's all about. And that's why we're here together, combining our efforts on a daily basis.

And the fourth thing is, and I think this is the most important one, a situation like this is like a two by four upside the head.
And if you were complacent before and let's face it, business had been going pretty darn well the last few years, and we
were maybe on cruise control, but you can't be complacent when you're faced with a big disruption like the one we faced.
And so suddenly you have to refocus on mission, you have to refocus on your people, you have to refocus on how you
communicate so you can continue to be interdependent and this has shaken us up.

And I heard a speaker say one time that that only the mediocre can be at their best every day. And I liked it, but I think
that when we get on cruise control and we start to read our own press clippings and business goes along pretty darn well for a number of years, we do get a little mediocre. And so, the occasional disruption shakes us up and it grabs us by our
lapels, and it causes us to really drill down and refocus, get rid of all the extraneous stuff and really refocus on what's
important.

So, in the comments, please let us know what benefits, what unanticipated benefits you see coming out of this disruption.
This is Wayne Rivers at the Family Business Institute. Thank you.