Don't Let Your Business Become a Wounded Dog

In business, as in life, adversity is a recurrent and inescapable event. The cliché:

“Into every life a little rain must fall”

is true no matter one’s education or level of success. The key difference between the businesses that close never to reopen again and those that thrive through their adversity is resilience.

Everyone knows that there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. An injured animal seeks to protect itself by striking out against all who approach. However dogs are unique in that they will invariably find one person with whom to bond. This difference is inexplicable, but predictable. They may not even choose their owner or master. Nonetheless wounded dogs will drag themselves to the feet of their chosen protector, nuzzling and begging for help. These wounded dogs know that they are no longer capable of caring for themselves and that one more adversity befalls them and they will die.

Businesses become wounded dogs when they fail to ensure that an adversity does not evolve into a disaster. In two decades of disaster field work and consulting to companies large and small I have seen and helped more than my share of wounded dogs. In all cases it did not matter whether the adversity came from outside the company such as a hurricane, earthquake or terrorist attack or if the adversity came from within; poor product design, marketing mishaps, financial missteps, or employee sabotage. The result is always the same. Some critical business pathway collapses resulting in a business disaster.

Observers both inside and outside the wounded business say that the disaster was “inevitable.” In the disaster field office, we know that no disaster is “inevitable.” Disaster is a simple equation no more different than profit and loss.

Disaster = Needs > Resources.

The most basic analogy is the financial disaster of “want” exceeding “wallet,” but this same equation holds true in all other critical areas of business. Conversely, resilience, the ability to cope with adversity and stave off disaster, is also represented by the simple equation:

Resilience = Resources > Needs.

Again the analogy is the financial resilience of “wallet” exceeding “wants.”

Now if this were the end of the story, one short speech, one short consultation, one small article in the Wall Street Journal and I could end all business disasters. The trick here is being able to identify what resources to have in abundance since nobody can have resources for all contingencies. Resource identification is based not on determining every possible adversity that can face a business. This is an incalculably high number and bounded only by the imagination not only of those that run the business but all of those who may wish it ill.

Rather, resource determination is based on an evaluation of the processes and pathways unique to each business. It requires the identification of “choke points,” those critical pathways that, if narrowed or destroyed, will choke off the life of the business. It is these critical steps for which resources are amassed. The goal is to ensure that no choke point becomes so narrow as to strangle the life of the business. This ensures resilience.

Some have adapted well through the application of the lessons I learned in the disaster field office. Others have failed to learn these lessons resulting in business disaster. In a few cases, the businesses stumbled upon their resilience. In others they were guided to it. But in all cases it was the identification of choke points and the allocation of resources that ensured that a business remained in business and did not become a wounded dog.

Dr. Maurice A. Ramirez is co-founder of Disaster Life Support of North America, Inc., a national provider of Disaster Preparation, Planning, Response and Recovery education. Through his consulting firm High Alert, LLC., he serves on expert panels for pandemic preparedness and healthcare surge planning with Congressional and Cabinet Members. Board certified in multiple medical specialties, Dr. Ramirez is Founding Chairperson of the American Board of Disaster Medicine and a Senior Physician-Federal Medical Officer for the Department of Homeland Security.