Send us Fan Mail What happens when the disruption you prepared for isn’t the disruption that actually shows up? Every business eventually gets hit with something unexpected. A major client leaves. A key employee quits. A vendor fails. Software goes down. Leadership changes. Or something lands on your desk that was nowhere on your business bingo card. In this episode of **The Business Fix**, Chrissy and Josh talk about how small business owners and managers can lead through disruption without creating more panic than the problem itself. When things go sideways, employees do not need leaders who perfectly predicted the future. They need leadership that is **steady, specific, and safe**. **Steady** means leaders regulate themselves first instead of handing their anxiety to the team. **Specific** means giving employees useful information: What happened? What matters right now? What should they do next? **Safe** means employees can ask questions, raise concerns, and keep working without assuming every disruption threatens their future. Chrissy also introduces a practical communication framework: **Facts, Focus, and Follow-Up.** Start with the facts. Tell people what you know and what you do not know yet. Then provide focus by explaining what remains steady and what needs attention now. Finally, provide follow-up so employees know when they will hear from leadership again and where questions should go. That follow-up matters because silence creates a vacuum. When employees do not know what is happening, they create their own explanation and it is usually worse than reality. The conversation also explores what a real **human safety net** looks like during change. Psychological safety does not mean promising that everything will be fine. Strong leaders provide clarity without false certainty. Then Josh shifts the conversation to operations and explains why businesses need **broad safety nets instead of hyper-specific disaster scripts**. A 50-step crisis plan is not much help if reality changes at step three. Resilient businesses build operational buffers around the things that keep the company alive: cash, communication, payroll, customer deliverables, vendors, critical workflows, employee capacity, and institutional knowledge. That also means looking at how tightly your business is running. If every employee operates at 100% capacity every day, your company may look efficient, but it is actually fragile. One disruption can quickly create overtime, mistakes, burnout, and turnover. Chrissy and Josh also discuss the danger of **single points of failure**. What happens if only one employee knows a critical process? What if one customer represents too much revenue? What if your only vendor suddenly cannot deliver? Josh shares the story of the 1997 UPS strike and how Summit Racing Equipment responded to the sudden loss of a critical shipping partner, showing why operational resilience matters. The episode also breaks down what leaders should protect first when disruption strikes: customer deliverables, cash collection, invoicing, payroll, and basic communication. Lower-priority projects may need to pause until the business stabilizes. One of the biggest takeaways is a better question for leaders to ask. Instead of: **“What terrible thing could happen someday?”** Ask: **“Where are we already fragile?”** That question may expose customer concentration, overloaded employees, undocumented knowledge, vendor dependence, weak management, or culture problems that are already creating risk. Sometimes the biggest disruption is not financial or operational. It is a **sudden loss of trust**. If you own a small or midsize business, manage employees, or lead a team, this episode will help you think differently about crisis management, business continuity, employee communication, leadership, and operational resilience. You cannot predict every disruption. But you can build a business and a leadership team that's capable of handling the one you never saw coming. Visit **TheBusinessFix.com** to connect with Chrissy and Josh and find more practical conversations about business management, leadership, workplace culture, and building a stronger organization. The habits that built your business can become the bottlenecks holding it back. We help leaders eliminate culture drift, reduce conflict, strengthen accountability, and build a company that thrives without them in every room. Because kindness without clarity is expensive avoidance. Learn more at https://businessfixpodcast.com. Tired of keynotes that inspire your team for an hour but change nothing on Monday morning? The Business Fix Live delivers practical tools for stronger leadership, better accountability, healthier culture, and real business growth. Book Josh and Chrissy for your next keynote, summit, or manager workshop at https://businessfixpodcast.com. Still hearing, “Nobody wants to work anymore”? It’s time for a better strategy. Join Chrissy and Josh at the BIG Summit in Cleveland on October 15 at 10:15 a.m. for practical tools to build a culture that works and lead with clarity. Get tickets at https://cose.org and use code Troche26 for your attendee discount. If you're looking to get help with your culture, or to help out an entire group, reach out to Josh and Chrissy today! We would love to see how we can help you, your business, or your event. Contact us! 🎙 Ready to Fix What’s Holding Your Business Back? The Business Fix podcast delivers real-world strategies to grow your business, lead your team, and reclaim your time. New episodes drop weekly—packed with insights for business owners and managers who want to do better. 🔗 Connect with Chrissy and Josh at https://www.businessfixpodcast.com/ for more tools, support, and clarity. Enjoy the episode? Leave us a review, share it with your leadership team, and let us know your biggest takeaway in the comments!
