It’s the ultimate business resilience question: If you got hit by a bus, would your company survive?
As the leader of a fast-growing business, I’ve asked myself this question several times as we strive to become the world’s biggest seller of luxury and ultra luxury cruises by 2030.
Apparently, the chances of getting hit by a bus are 495,000-1 but could your company cope with a fire, flood or the unexpected departure of a senior member of staff?
It’s the reason why Panache Cruises invest a lot of time and money in the development of our managers.
In recent weeks our staff have benefited from sessions run by the inimitable Michael Finnigan, founder of i2i, and employee engagement experts Mark Gregory and Alex Lewis.
I myself recently went to Virgin’s head office in London to listen to a fantastic panel about purpose, value and culture.
As well as meeting Holly Branson, chief purpose and vision officer at Virgin, I heard a really insightful panel contribution from Steve Hewitt, former CEO of Gymshark.
Although this is my third cruise retail startup, and I think I’ve got some good experience, I do this because I certainly don’t know everything.
I’ve got a lot to learn and that’s my mantra every single day.
Although it’s reassuring to hear you’re on the right track, I always pick up ideas that I then take back into Panache.
Virgin is a really good example. Clearly, they’re a profitable company but they’re also purpose and culture-driven, which is what we are.
We put our colleagues first, who look after our customers, who look after our cruise line partners. It’s great to listen to people who have a similar philosophy to ourselves at Panache Cruises.
As a leader I’m very keen to continue learning but I recognise the importance of our senior and middle management team continuing to develop for our next stage of growth.
It’s my role to make sure that, if I did get run over by a bus, the senior management team would be equipped to take over to run the business and grow it.
At Panache we speak a lot about our ‘North Star’ strategy, which is a guiding principle for our future operation and growth.
One of the things we worked with Michael Finnigan on was developing and understanding ourselves as individuals and where we can step into the management teams.
It’s important to understand that we’re all different and people offer different things. It’s only when you psychoanalyse yourself and other people that you see that jigsaw come together.
Employee engagement experts Mark Gregory and Alex Lewis added real value by sanity checking that we’re on track for our North Star to achieve our mid and longer-term objectives.
What it all means is we’re in good hands in the unlikely event I do get hit by a bus – although I’d rather not put that particular theory to the test.