How Have You Been Successful in Dealing with Industry Disruption?

Been Successful in Dealing with Industry Disruption

Have you dealt with industry disruption in your career? Glenn Zweig discussed how every industry is being disrupted by COVID-19 in the podcast episode, How to Switch Industries from Executive Search Consultants Perspective.

What companies are looking for are candidates who have been successful in dealing with industry disruption.

In this post, I will discuss 3 different types of industry disruption that has occurred due to COVID-19. There are many more.

Supply Chain Disruption

The number 1 issue in the supply chain today is the shortage of shipping containers in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This has driven shipping costs up 300%.

The problem is that there is a huge imbalance in shipping container distribution around the world. The reason for this is simple. After we came off lockdown last year much of the western world has been buying products from the PRC in huge volumes. The list of products includes personal protection equipment (PPE).

Shipping containers are moving to the US and Europe but they are not coming back. If someone is willing to pay to have them returned they come back empty.

This shortage has further been exacerbated by the slowdown in aviation traffic. Many technology products like iPhones used to be shipped on commercial flights in excess storage space. As you probably know international flights have virtually disappeared. This has forced technology companies to compete for shipping containers.

Dealing with Supply Chain Disruption

Have you dealt with supply shortages in your career? How did you handle it? Can you create a story around how you handled this kind of disruption?

Dig back into your career and start creating stories where you dealt with similar kinds of problems. You might even consider writing a LinkedIn or Medium article about how the problems we are having today directly relate to the problem you solved.

Customer Behavior Changes

The restaurant and foodservice industry has been hit hard by the pandemic. Thousands of restaurants have gone out of business because they have not been able to shift to a take-out or delivery model.

Listen to the most recent episode

This shift is causing the industry to adapt. One of the more fascinating shifts is the move to “dark kitchens”. This concept is described in the article When Kitchens Go Dark: How COVID-19 Could Transform the Restaurant Industry.

The author states:

These are lean spaces that are dedicated exclusively to food delivery and takeout. A popular version is a shared commercial space that holds up to 20 kitchens and is leased to different food operators. This model offers unique quality trade-offs to consumers with lower prices and greater choices and is designed to operate through a new economic model for businesses, with lower capital expense, reduced delivery cost, and higher labor utilization.

The rapid shift in customer behavior has caused restaurant and foodservice industry disruption.

Dealing with Customer Behavior Changes

This is not the first time nor will it be the last that customers have changed their purchasing behaviors. This happened very rapidly and companies are having to be very nimble or they will likely go out of business.

Have you dealt with something similar in your career? Did you come up with an innovative solution?

Regulatory Changes

Telehealth has taken off due to the pandemic. That was only possible due to the relaxation of HIPAA regulations by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in March of 2020.

Quite suddenly medical facilities and professionals could use commonly used video tools like Zoom, Skype, Facetime, Google Meet, and other products to meet with patients.

This regulatory change forced 2 groups to adapt:

The tool providers had to add greater security to their products.
Healthcare facilities had to adapt to meeting patients virtually rather than in person.

This has been a huge shift that was only made possible by a simple regulatory change. This has spurred innovation in the healthcare software business with a slew of new products that integrate video patient visits with the other medical systems.

Dealing with Regulatory Changes

This is a fairly unusual situation in that the change happened very rapidly. Government regulations or how they are implemented do not typically happen this rapidly but of course, this pandemic is an unusual situation.

There are other regulatory shifts that have happened including import/export and immigration/travel restrictions during the pandemic. There will likely be more to occur in 2021.

Have you dealt with a regulatory change that caused industry disruption? What was your solution?

Branding Yourself for Industry Disruption

As I suggested earlier, create brand stories around your past experiences where you came up with solutions to disruptions.

I strongly recommend you create content around these stories. This could include:

Writing LinkedIn or Medium articles
Pitching yourself to podcast hosts to be interviewed
Start a blog
All of the above

What hiring managers want to know is how you dealt with difficult situations. Industry disruption from COVID-19 is not going to stop in 2021. The disruption will continue for several years so this is a good time to reposition yourself.

Your ability to deal with disruption should become part of your brand.

This will require you to put your expertise out there publically. Just like this blog and the Repurpose Your Career podcast has enabled me to create my brand, you can do the same.

How have you been successful in dealing with industry disruption? Are you willing to promote that success as part of your personal brand?

Marc Miller

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