I’ve never hid the fact I’m what some regard as woo-woo. It’s time the woo-woo presents itself as a parallel to business ownership and doing business continuity.
The Fool’s Journey comes from Tarot. It is the cycle from a place of excitement, good intentions, but also naivete. Throughout the journey, the Fool gets guidance, support and learns to better handle what life throws at him or her. There is also time for reflection and perspective shifting as well as harder times from which the Fool learns, all on the way to ultimate success. And the journey starts anew from the beginning with the next phase.
Can you see how this cycle is like being an entrepreneur? Even more so where the business continuity (BC) professional enters and they are both tested with disasters and disruptions, all on the way to a thriving and growing business. Once any major change happens, the journey starts again.
The foundational knowledge of a business continuity professional is the guide for walking business owners along the path of Assessment, Empowerment, and Transformation.
The Hero is the BC professional – and ultimately the entrepreneur after learning and adopting BC (but more on that later). In tandem, both will assess the current structure of the business and any risks or hazards associated with it and the ecosystem that supports the business. There is information the entrepreneur doesn’t know he or she doesn’t know. The BC professional is there to point it out. The BC professional exposes single points of failure. The BC professional lights the path and provides a lot of valuable information to the entrepreneur all with the aim of keeping the business alive.
The entrepreneur is empowered by the BC professional. I have heard from clients that they can’t “unsee” BC. There is a shift in their brain connections. They begin to see how it all fits and new risks are light up fireflies in the night. The entrepreneur is also given the important information to make any decisions they need to make. That leads the entrepreneur to transformation.
Once armed with BC, the entrepreneur makes a slew of decisions to strengthen their business. No matter what the option, they have options. They can grow. They can reduce their size (if that’s what’s best). They can make their business more valuable to sell (if that’s what they want). They can shift their entire business service or product if that’s what the writing on the wall calls for. They can only achieve this through the other two steps in the path, though.
And this is why it isn’t Fool’s journey – it’s the journey of the Hero: the BC professional guiding the entrepreneur to be the Hero to their employees, their customers and the community. They get to keep everyone living the life they deserve, which is a good one.
The journey ends when the business is transformed from an insecure one to a secure one. Then we start anew with the next phase.
