Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

This is the fourth and last post on the series about paragliding and Entrepreneurship. On the three previous ones we covered the topics of preparing to startup, the startup phase itself and the growth period. Now it is time to discuss about how to deal with adversity.

A while after the pleasant flight of the previous post, large clouds started covering the horizon. As if Nature wanted to help me write this blog, it was a perfect metaphor of how in countries like Argentina, right when things start going well you get a storm threatening to cut your wings.

A few minutes later I could barely see a few feet away and the valley below had disappeared. Without knowing what was in front of me, I had to make a decisions: take off into the clouds or give up and let the clouds end my experience.

Let’s cover now a few ideas on how to deal with adversity, on a paraglider and as an Entrepreneur:

1) Trust your ‘maps’: In the development of a project, there are always times in which the horizon gets covered with dark clouds and the future looks uncertain. These are the breaking points, the true tests. In those occasions, if your vision does not do any good, you have to rely on your experience and the other senses. Your knowledge of the ‘land’ gained under normal times is the best tool to keep your confidence.

2) Take the tough decisions before before they happen: Nine  months before the economic collapse of the Argentinean economy in December 2001, at Officenet we were already working on a contingency plan we internally called “Plan Pi”.

That plan dealt with all the decisions that had to be made and all the changes that had to be implemented in a scenario like the one we had to deal with later that year. At that point in time, with our heads still cool and discussing a hypothetical situation, we could determine the tough road to follow if the situation deteriorated significantly. When the collapse did happen, all the tough calls had been made already. Making those decisions in the heat of the moment would have been terribly difficult. As with those signs that say: “In case of fire, break the glass”, we broke the glass, looked at what we had written in the calm days before the storm and put it into practice.

Preparing for difficult scenarios way before they happen is essential. It is extremely hard to do it while you are in the middle of them. Analyzing them before also allows you to envision different potential alternatives and determine a course of action depending on which one of them materializes.

3) To ordinary problems, ordinary solutions; to extraordinary problems, extraordinary solutions: You cannot deal with abnormal circumstances using your normal approaches. The operational processes are designed to deal with a certain environment. A very common error is to try to solve uncommon situations with our normal, day to day tools.

The first thing to do is to adopt an Emergency mindset and be flexible to redefine all that’s necessary to bet up to par with the challenge we are facing.

4) Prioritize survival: Survival is the only North to target. All other long or even mid term goals are relegated. Keeping that in mind is somehow reassuring when implementing the most painful changes.

It was Friday the 21st of December, 2001, Argentina had collapsed the day before and I was alone, sitting in my office, checking what Plan Pi prescribed: my next step had to be to downsize the company firing a lot of people.

A company that up to that day had hired and hired, suddenly was faced with having to let go a substantial part of its team. All this was happening a couple of days before Christmas. I felt beat down for what was ahead of me. I was desperately looking for an excuse to postpone the decision, at least until after the Holiday Season. I called one of my Board Members for advise and he said it was a good idea to wait until after New Years Day. I sighed in relief.

But a minute after I hung up, something inside of me told me I had to move on and do it. With pain in my heart I implemented everything we had decided nine months before. And in that following weekend, a law was passed by which severance payments were doubled, that might have left Officenet almost broke.

Looking back, despite how bad it all felt, I have the pride of having been able to prioritize survival, made the tough calls when I had to and saved the jobs of all the people we kept, and all the ones we could hire in the following years.

I hope this series of posts were useful to Entrepreneurs in the process of creating and growing their endeavors.

Photo: Jim Griggs