How fast can your business recover from the unexpected? I want to share with you some events that have happened over the last 24 hours.
There was a beautiful stunning day yesterday.
And then suddenly, right around 6 pm, a huge thunderstorm arrived and went through the Byron Shire haven't had one like this for several years.
I can't remember the last time, probably, maybe five, six years ago, big storms came through.
And the Northern River is a funny place.
There's a lot of trees, and we've had a lot of rain already.
So often the roots are not that well held in with this big storm that had very high winds, suddenly, there are trees down throughout the entire area.
This means that virtually everyone in the countryside living rurally, which is where I live has been without power.
And we just got power back maybe an hour ago.
So over the last 24 hours out of those 24.
Before the storm, we had about four hours and then the storm 18 hours down and then back up for about an hour.
Now it now is down without power.
It's an inconvenience.
There's no doubt about that.
Particularly because on our property, our water supply is linked to electricity, there's a pump that sits at the bottom of the tank and pumps the water into the house.
So no electricity, no water.
Now, this presents some interesting challenges.
It means that everything that runs on water, electricity is out including showers, toilets, pools, washing machines, dishwashers, dryers, fans, aircon, all of those things, not working.
Now 18 hours, it's not the end of the world, yes, there was a backlog across a bunch of areas in the house.
But once the electricity came on, I was able to recover.
If this had gone on for two days, three days, five days or more.
Now, I would definitely be running to significant problems fundamentally, usually around water as the primary one.
And we have had this situation before where I ended up buying just a lot of water.
And if you go to the supermarket and buy water is extremely expensive, compared to the usual cost of a couple of cents per hour to run the pumps for us.
But the interesting thing that I wanted to share with you was how I was able to recover quickly.
So I already loaded up the washing machine and the dryer and the dishwasher had those ready, I'd cleaned the pool robot thing that goes and cleans leaves up and that was ready to go.
The pool filter itself and the septic all turn on automatically.
And so really, it was just a matter of pressing the buttons and allowing everything to get going.
So the recovery time was very fast.
And you might think well, that's going to be exactly the same in business as well.
But what I want you to appreciate is why could I recover my house? So quickly? Why was that? Well, the answer is because those systems do the washing and the drying.
And the dishwashing typically only runs two, three, maybe four hours a day, the pool filter does run eight hours, but it's such a big body of water that being out for one day, it's not a big deal.
But in business and in your business, you may not have that luxury, some of your mission-critical systems may not be running at 10% of the day.
But rather they're probably working closer to 100%.
Why? Because that's how the business makes money.
Now, if I had a system that was operating at 100%, guess what my recovery time would not be anywhere as fast as it has been why? Because of the 18 hours down production.
Even if I immediately get that mission-critical 100% functioning system back up and running, I've now got a gap of 18-hours, and the only way to catch that 18-hour gap up is to run faster than 100% of actually got to do 120% or 200% of my normal production in order to close that gap.
This is a problem.
This is a problem if only if the maximum capacity of your systems is 100% and you have no ability to go to 110 120 150 200%
then you will not catch up.
And your only hope then is perhaps 100% of business hours.
It's being used.
And so you could extend on the weekends and catch up, or extend your hours and catch up.
But this is worth considering, because there may be some mission-critical parts of your business that you do need to run faster than 100%.
And you cannot do it with the current equipment.
And so you'd like, Okay, how are we going to do it? Well, we might have to temporarily bring on more staff, more equipment, more aspects of whatever that system has, and duplicate or triplicate for a while to catch up and then let go of those resources.
But notice that if you don't know what makes up that system very well, if you kind of have a vague idea, or it's all in your team's heads, then your ability to duplicate that system, and temporarily increase production to 121 50 to 100%, is going to be very limited.
And we're already seeing this, we're seeing this in the supply chain disruption.
And just like the thunderstorm coming through as a chaotic event, the expectation should be that we are going to have further chaotic events where interestingly enough in a very challenging period where it seems like COVID, these singular viruses come through, and it's had a massive effect.
But the interesting thing is that the true effects have maybe not even been experienced yet.
And so your capacity to deal with this is critical.
Some businesses, many businesses even have been unable to deal with the disruption.
So far, they folded they're gone.
And yes, there will be others that rise up to take their place.
But they are coming into a difficult environment, a more difficult environment that existed in 2018, or 2015, or even back in 2005.
But all is not lost.
Do not mistake, chaos, and difficulties for lack of opportunity.
You see, the businesses that thrive in chaotic situations will have a massive strategic advantage, and those that can think and adapt, that have a clear vision of what is going on in their business and what is going on in the marketplace, we'll be poised to capitalize in a very, very good way.
A just-finished unicorn project, written 2019 pre COVID.
But the ideas in that book suggested that our technological capabilities as a species will significantly improve, because of our ability to deploy awesome software.
They saw many of the problems of our world as being fixable and improvable that come with better software.
And though the book itself unicorn project is the second part of another book, called the Phoenix Project, these two together, really document the learnings that can be taken from lean manufacturing and put into software Dev, but with the chaotic element that we now have, you must be able to respond to unusual changes supply chain disruption.
And that comes through your understanding of one thing and that is your systems, the more ability that you have to see clearly what the systems are that run your business and their strengths and weaknesses, and how you will have to pivot and improve or change or duplicate depending on what's going on, will significantly impact your business success in the next one to five even 10 years do not expect the effects of COVID to go away.
Even if the virus itself finishes at some point in the next months or perhaps a year.
The effects and the change for many businesses and many governments that are unable to respond to the chaos that we are facing will leave an open opportunity for someone like you who is invested not only in business success but knowing why businesses are successful and resilient, whichever aspects of life change.
If that's something you're interested in, head over to the training about systems and how you can get them into your business quickly and effectively so that you get greater productivity, and particularly more ability to respond to difficulties and chaos in the world.
That's something you're interested in, head over to System IO.
Thanks for tuning in today.
I hope you got a lot of value out of today's session.
I'd certainly enjoyed making it for you.
It's awesome to have the electricity back on.
And the one change that I'm thinking about is okay, how do I get backup power to my house in case it's not an 18 hour, but rather it's a 36 or 72, or even a week-long outage, I want to have power in my household so that we don't have to suffer from the difficulties of uncontrolled change that happened in the world.
That's all I got for you.
I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode as we continue this journey into the power systems that create results.
See you then.
