I was at a networking meeting the other day, talking about marketing strategies and what we can do to improve our business visibility.

At that point, we found out that one of the participants just experienced a couple of severe challenges in her personal life. Suddenly that business stuff didn’t feel so important. She needed our immediate compassion and support.

I’m really glad that others in my life have given me that kind of sensitivity. Whether it’s a family emergency or health setback or whatever, the people I’ve worked with have recognized that relating as humans takes precedence over the day-to-day business stuff.

Yes, it’s inconvenient. There’s stuff to get done. But life is messy sometimes.

It’s similar to that big snowstorm we had a few years ago, where business shut down for a few days while we couldn’t get out of our homes. We shoveled snow and met our neighbors.

And guess what? The world didn’t fall apart!

Because people were compassionate.

Here’s the question we should ponder today: How do we build that kind of humanity and compassion into our business? We’ll need it someday, for whatever reason, and will appreciate that there’s flexibility.

If you’ve built a business that is so fragile it falls apart when everything doesn’t run according to plan, it’s not going to succeed. SOMETHING is going to happen, just because … that’s life.

What parts of your business are too brittle to survive even a minor setback?

Because it WILL happen; we just don’t know what it will look like.

This article was first published in InnovatioNews.