Lessons in resilience for small business

Melonie Cole, owner of Mindshift, has learned a lot about resilience recently.

In the past few weeks, our whole team (of 5 fabulous Mindshifters) has had Covid. Running a business becomes that bit harder when staff are unwell. Even harder, when we’re all unwell together!

Here are our key learnings, applicable to business of any size.

1. Back up everything! Our designers could quickly pick up another designers work and take it to completion as they could easily find files.

2. Be transparent with customers. People will understand if something will be a little later than expected.

3. Use a password manager – it’s hard enough remembering all your unique passwords, but with brain fog and after a few days off, it’s impossible.

4. Be as open as possible with staff about what’s happening with the business – your pipeline, 90-day goals, conversations with customers etc. If you’re a business owner and you’re away, your team can carry on – no surprises.

5. Have great planning! Every week I send a plan of what’s happening for the current week – who’s doing what and when. This is essential for a small team so we can support each other, make the most of our working hours, and deliver our best work for our customers.

6. Document your key business processes including payroll, GST, accounts payable. If your fabulous office manager / administrator is away, even the most admin-adverse business owner (that’s me!) can do the all-important payroll.

7. Ensure your team have the skills needed to step in for their colleagues if need be. For us, that means our design team are all skilled and experienced in all the software we use day-to-day.

8. Use Teams to communicate with each other and customers. Less email and conversations and files are easily found and shared.

9. Most importantly, give your team the time they need to recover and enjoy work again after being unwell.

Kia kaha.