Hey! Justin here, and welcome to Just Go Grind, a newsletter sharing the lessons, tactics, and stories of world-class founders! Today we’ve got a special guest post from Robin P. Zander the director of the annual Responsive Conference, and writer of Snafu, a weekly newsletter about influence and behavior change. I’ll let Robin take it from here!

What It Takes to Create a Thriving Organization

When you are just starting, you – and your nascent company – have to be resilient. Every successful company begins by finding a need and adapting to a changing market. 

But as your company grows – as two people become twenty – your ability to respond slows.

The world is changing more rapidly than we have ever seen before in human history. This wasn’t an accepted fact just a few years ago. But today – especially because of the acceleration brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic – we take this acceleration for granted. 

The lifespan of the most successful companies in the world has plummeted over the last three decades.

According to 2021 estimates, companies on the S&P 500 are expected to remain in the index for an average of fifteen years, compared to sixty-one years in 1958. 

The only companies – startups or enterprises – that survive are those that adapt quickly to change.

Through hundreds of interviews with members of the global Responsive.org movement, I’ve learned about some uncommon approaches that the founders of startups, governmental organizations, and even your neighborhood brick-and-mortar use to adapt and thrive. 

Plan for the Unexpected

On November 30th, 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. At the company’s internal meeting that morning, they discussed that it would be a silent launch, and that “no significant impact on sales” was expected, since the “audience is mostly researchers.”

They couldn’t have been more wrong. 

In the last eighteen months, there has been a complete transformation of the startup industry. We’ve witnessed significant macroeconomic swings – seesawing markets and mass layoffs.

The biggest tech companies are pouring billions of dollars into AI, while simultaneously laying off thousands of workers every week.

AI has already changed how we work. But the emergence of AI also drives home the broader lesson, which is that any organization or industry can be shaken up at any moment. 

Not just companies, but whole industries can change with unprecedented speed. The goal of every company should be to become resilient and to respond to inevitable change. 

Once a month, “red team” your business. Consider if your business or industry were to be shaken up, how might it be and how would you adapt? 

These questions can help:

• If your industry were to be disrupted overnight, how might that happen? How would you then adapt?

• If your market were half the size or twice the size overnight, what would you do differently?

• What is your competitive advantage over another specific business in your industry?

Develop A Wartime Cadence

In the midst of the Iraq War, the U.S. Military was facing a new challenge.

As U.S. Navy SEAL Executive Officer Chris Fussell describes in his book One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams, they were trying to defeat a 21st-century threat with a 20th-century playbook. 

Al Qaeda terrorists were spreading propaganda using YouTube and formulating plans via Internet forums. Meanwhile, the U.S. military relied on its traditional hierarchical decision-making processes, with bottlenecked communication channels.

Chris Fussell and his cohort adopted a hybrid model blending characteristics of both hierarchy and networks, which they came to refer to as a “team of teams” approach. This model empowered the people closest to the action to make the moment-by-moment decisions necessary to meet the challenges of a new and agile enemy.

The Joint Special Operations Task Force implemented this, in part, through an Operations and Intelligence forum—a daily ninety-minute all-hands video conference, with hundreds of people joining from all over the globe.

The daily global video call was designed to focus on strategy and tactics within a very tight twenty-four-hour time horizon. 

Meetings are often ineffective because there is unstated disagreement about what time horizon people are focusing on. This large daily video conference gave the Task Force the ability to maintain an understanding of, and build continuity across, globally divided teams. 

What is your solution to improving communication across your organization, between employees, or even with your customers? 

• Would a daily or weekly 1:1 with key employees change communication?

• Would conducting a monthly or quarterly in-person gathering for your primary customers change how they interact with your company?

• Are there other strategies you can use to give authority to the people most responsible for engaging with your customers?

Prioritize People

In 2016 I started a restaurant in the San Francisco Mission district. I started the business with no experience in less than three weeks, so understandably we desperately needed staff. 

One day, a man named Frank dropped off his resume. Frank was a professional and he soon became indispensable at the café. 

On May 20, 2016, Frank had been scheduled to open the café.

Around 9:30 a.m., I got a call that Frank hadn’t shown up.

I checked to see if he’d sent me any messages, but there were none.

I called him and it went to voicemail.

A week later, I sent a light-hearted email with the subject “Are you still alive?” 

Frank was a “no call, no show” – all too common in the restaurant industry. A simple case of job abandonment. But it didn’t seem like Frank, who was a consummate and cheerful professional. 

I found Frank’s brother on Facebook, messaged him, and he called me back. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this.” He said. “My brother is dead. He was hit and killed by a train.” He went on: “I want you to know how happy he was to be working at Robin’s Café.”

Frank’s death is a constant reminder for me of how truly transient and changeable business – and life – can be. 

I had to be resilient, not just in my response to Frank’s death, but to be able to mentor and support those at our café and in the community who knew him. 

During the years I ran Robin’s Cafe, I was determined to build into the ethos of our restaurant the knowledge that things can change in an instant.

I wanted my team to be resilient when times got tough and grateful when work went well. I like to think that in some way that commitment to resilience and good humor is a small homage to Frank.

Responsive.org organizations – no matter how big or small – create meaningful work. Profits and processes matter, but you must also factor in people. 

• People want purpose at work, even if the work is serving customers avocado toast and coffee. How can you further empower your employees or customers?

• How might you build your organization to empower your employees, managers, and leaders at work?

• What small kindnesses or acts of care can you bring to your startup – whether that’s through a daily check-in, remembering a birthday, or other small acts of thoughtfulness?

Organizations that find ways to serve the needs of the people who work within them are the ones that will survive.

While these tactics won’t necessitate the success of your startup, the absence of any one of these might be your downfall.

When you plan for the unexpected, maintain a wartime communication cadence, and prioritize your people, you’ll be better able to adapt and change.

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Thanks for reading!

Best,

Justin

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