"Spiders in COVID Space: more stories of adapting to unwanted change" is an anthology of articles about inspiring pivots made during the COVID-19 pandemic. The series is a sequel to, and draws on the 11 adaptive traits identified in, the bestselling book Spiders in Space: Successfully Adapting to Unwanted Change by Todd Hirsch and Robert Roach (2017).
The spiders in the title were sent into space by NASA to see if they could spin webs without the aid of gravity. After some false starts, they adapted to the new conditions and were able to spin brand new structures of webs in a totally different environment. The pandemic has presented all of us with a wide range of situations where our gravity has been taken away.
This series has two goals:
So far, we have interviewed seven companies/organizations about their experiences during the pandemic: Neil Zeller Photography; The National access Arts Centre (formerly The Indefinite Arts Centre); JB Music Therapy; The Kerby Centre; The Promo Addict; BikeBike; and Modern Rentals. We hope to compile the stories and the themes that emerge from them in a new edition of Spiders in Space that will come out early next year.
Enjoy these stories of adaptability!
- Todd and Rob
The spiders in the title were sent into space by NASA to see if they could spin webs without the aid of gravity. After some false starts, they adapted to the new conditions and were able to spin brand new structures of webs in a totally different environment. The pandemic has presented all of us with a wide range of situations where our gravity has been taken away.
This series has two goals:
- to share some inspirational examples of adapting to change during COVID-19; and
- to revisit the adaptive traits outlined in our book to see if they still apply and, in turn, be of use to others who've lost their gravity in the pandemic.
So far, we have interviewed seven companies/organizations about their experiences during the pandemic: Neil Zeller Photography; The National access Arts Centre (formerly The Indefinite Arts Centre); JB Music Therapy; The Kerby Centre; The Promo Addict; BikeBike; and Modern Rentals. We hope to compile the stories and the themes that emerge from them in a new edition of Spiders in Space that will come out early next year.
Enjoy these stories of adaptability!
- Todd and Rob
The human element:
How strong values helped a tech company adapt during the pandemic
Punchcard Systems
25-NOV-2020
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“If we weren’t making money, we had to be learning.”
The toques were the first sign of trouble to come.
“We had ordered branded toques for our team, but they didn’t arrive because the supply chain was disrupted,” recalls Sam Jenkins, Managing Partner of an Edmonton-based software development company called Punchcard Systems. “This made us realize that something big might be happening.”
Started in 2016, Punchcard creates software solutions for its clients such as automating sales processes and setting up an employee intranet. As such, it was in a relatively good position to adapt to the new conditions created by the pandemic.
“We were able to grab our laptops and work at home,” says Jenkins. “I remember going to the office a couple weeks after the lockdown started and it struck me as odd because there were desks missing and monitor cables left behind. It looked like somebody had robbed us!”
But it wasn’t as easy as you might think. There were two main problems.
Hey buddy, can you spare an app?
First, even though Punchcard’s digital products could be developed remotely and the team was well-versed in online tools, its clients suddenly either didn’t have the wherewithal to make upgrades to their tech because of the pandemic or deprioritized doing so for the same reason.
“We could work remotely, but what we weren't ready for was the impact of the pandemic on our customers. We doubled in size over the course of 2019 and our revenues were still good in March. And then, just like everybody else, the cliff appeared and we fell off,” recalls Jenkins. Most of Punchcard’s clients were large enterprises and many were in the oil and gas sector. “As budgets were readjusted to conserve cash, things were canceled.”
That was definitely problem number one, but with everyone working remotely, Punchcard’s culture and team approach were also being tested. The team was used to gathering together physically to both work and socialize. And while video meetings have a lot of advantages—especially during a pandemic—they simply can’t replicate what goes on in a vibrant office setting. (As an aside, video meetings are probably better than life in a non-vibrant office where everyone walks around like zombies when they are not sequestered in their cubicles.)
So what did Punchcard do? How did the team go about adapting to the harsher environment they found themselves in?
Let’s throw it at the wall and see if it sticks
When Sam and his team noticed that the toques didn’t show up, they immediately put on their thinking caps. You can’t always get ahead of unwanted change, but the sooner you start trying to adapt—the sooner you attune your mind to the need to adapt—the better.
“Early on in the pandemic, even before we were calling it a pandemic, we were trying to figure out how we could serve our customers a little bit more effectively.”
It would be nice when things go sideways if we could just put our heads down and keep doing what we were before, but this is a deadend. The way through to the other side is found through open mindedness, experimentation and risk taking. These adaptive processes are not sufficient to ensure a successful outcome, but they are critical prerequisites.
Punchard’s dedication to being open to new ideas is embedded in one of the six core values posted on its website: “We value different opinions, skills, and backgrounds. With our diverse perspectives comes a breadth of knowledge that can challenge our conventional ways of doing things and make things better.”
“Our very first ‘COVID experiment’ happened in mid-March,” says Jenkins. “A customer of ours texted me on a Saturday morning saying ‘I have an idea.’ I can't resist when people send stuff like that—when somebody wants to start something new. The very next day, we launched COVID-19 Continuity.” The website is a trove of information and resources intended to help businesses operate during the pandemic.
“We realized that there was going to be a gap in terms of navigating the information that would help businesses and organizations deal with COVID, so we just started working with partners to pull information into a single source.”
The gift of time
Working on this and other COVID experiments was not paying the bills, but it was a key part of the adaptive process for Punchcard.
“The experiments were meant to give us more information to be able to adapt throughout the course of the pandemic. This was made possible by the fact that we had a bunch of time that we didn't normally have. As an entrepreneur, I wasn't content to just hit pause on the business and do nothing. I wanted to make sure that if we weren't making money, we had to be learning how to deal with what the new reality was going to look like.”
As with so many other stories of successful adapting, Punchcard got some help along the way. The federal wage subsidy enabled Punchard to keep paying its staff when its business dried up due to the pandemic.
“There was a period after our revenue dropped off and before work started up again—around April to June—when we really needed the wage subsidy,” says Jenkins. “It’s not like the wage subsidy covered everything, but it made it possible for my business partner and I to say: We are not going to cut staff. We are going to keep people whole. And we are going to keep people busy. Having a purpose was, I think, really important for our staff and made being locked down a lot easier.”
Show up, take risks, and ship it
With experimentation, however, comes failure. As a long-time entrepreneur, Jenkins and his business partner knew this long before COVID came along. Punchard was, in fact, created after a previous startup went belly up. “Like all good entrepreneurs, we've stubbed our toe lots and lots of times,” notes Jenkins.
Listening to story after story of successful pivots, it’s clear that adapting to change demands that you put something on line. You have to embrace risk—and the failure that often accompanies it—as core elements of the process. This is aptly summarized by one of the company’s mantras: “Show up, take risks, and ship it.” The “ship it” part is critical because it’s not sufficient to just play around with new ideas and approaches; you have to settle on something concrete and actually produce an outcome.
“You have to finish your sprint with a completed deliverable. Part of our mantra is that you have to ship it—you have to take it to production or to market. Above all else, we have to deliver.”
There is another useful adaptive trait at work here: realistic faith. Jenkins and the team were able to operate amid a profound paradox. On the one hand, they had enough faith in themselves and their team approach to experiment. On the other hand, they didn’t expect every throw of the dice to go their way. That’s where the realism came in. Some—many—experiments fail. But if you are smart, keep at it, and have some luck on your side, you can achieve good results. Just not always. Understanding this is what practicing realist faith is all about.
The pivot
In this vein, it was a failed project involving a mobile app for sharing information among doctors that, along with the “COVID experiments,” spurred a line of business that has not only helped Punchcard get through the pandemic, but will serve it well long after it’s over.
“That project, through experimentation and iteration, helped us develop our digital product acceleration process, which we've now implemented half a dozen times. Our goal is to build useful things fast. We had some traction, but not the whole time. But again, these experiments were meant to be iterative,” explains Jenkins.
“Before COVID, our customers [typically large companies or organizations] would come to us to build a specific piece of custom software for them. During the pandemic, we’ve focused on ensuring that we know exactly what we are great at in terms of providing those services. But we’ve also been using the time that was given to us to experiment with developing our own products.” The result has been not only new products, but also new markets for Punchcard to pursue.
“I asked my business partner about this the other day,” says Jenkins. “I asked him if he feels like we're in a better spot today than we were in at the beginning of the pandemic. He sat back, thought about it, and said: ‘I wish the pandemic hadn't happened. We'd be in a better spot financially. But we’ve been able to really focus on who we are and what we do really well.’”
“Through our COVID experiments, we prototyped a bunch of different products. As a result, we're in the process of really pivoting our business away from just offering customer software services. Services will remain a big part of our business, but now we will also be launching our own platforms,” says Jenkins. “We’ve shifted our business from almost exclusively providing services to enterprise clients, to working with a range of smaller customers focused on disruption and transformation.”
This is a great pivot for Punchard (not to mention for the future growth of Alberta’s tech sector), but it’s been working because a number adaptive traits have been put to use by Jenkins and the Punchcard team.
Standing alongside the realistic faith noted above, is another adaptive trait: passion. Adapting to change is not easy and there are many (good and bad) reasons to simply throw in the towel. To get through this, you need to truly want to be doing what you are doing. You need to be willing to put in the hard work and deal with the mental and physical stress.
“Uncertainty is stressful. That's an understatement! However, because we operate with an acknowledgment of that uncertainty on a regular basis for our team, I think that has enabled us to stay strong and stay strong together.”
In this regard, a passion for your work, your cause, or your beliefs is what tends to make the difference between adapting and merely getting by, or worse, having to give up entirely.
“The customers we are working with today are very different from the customers we were working with on a regular basis in 2019. Since the pandemic started, we’ve helped half a dozen startups launch by working with them to build out their infrastructure. Doing so has unlocked a whole bunch of passion within my team. The team realized how excited they are by helping our clients do something that is almost impossible. We didn't get to do that as much with our larger clients because there's more risk aversion. So that, to me, is one of the big differences between 2019 and 2020.”
Ask your gut
It comes up in every story that ends—after being fired in the kiln of unwanted change—with a stronger person, group, business or non-profit organization: successful adapters know, believe in, and act on their core story.
“I took part in a virtual conference a couple months ago and one of the questions was: what was the one think that you invested in prior to the pandemic that has really begun to pay off? It’s something I borrowed from [University of Alberta Chancellor] Peggy Garritty, years ago; investing in our core values. We had spent a whole bunch of time writing them down and working on them and workshopping them as an organization. But it wasn't until the pandemic happened that we realized how important it was that we operated by those core values on an ongoing basis,” says Jenkins.
You need to know who you are, what you stand for, what you like doing, and what you are good at doing. Each of these things will be tested when unwanted change is in play. And if you don’t have clear answers, unwanted change will become a siren call that pulls you in too many directions.
Punchcard knew its core story going into the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t do some editing. In fact, having a clear understanding of your core story is what makes it possible to alter it without losing the main plot. This highlights another important adaptive trait: the ability to harness tension.
Sometimes, it’s best to stick with your knitting when unwanted change comes along rather than let it trick you into doing something you are not good at or don’t in your heart want to do. In these cases, knowing your core story helps prevent mission drift and foolish forays into new products and services.
Other times, however, adapting requires you to alter the course you are on. This might mean unearthing your core story or it might mean reworking it. Like tuning a piano or guitar, successful adapters harness the tension this creates rather than see it as a purely black and white situation.
In Punchcard’s case, they had achieved success providing software development services to large businesses. The company’s penchant for experimentation and risk-taking, along with other elements of its core story, were in play, but muted by the needs of their clients. When the pandemic caused their traditional market to go into hibernation, Punchard didn’t have to change its core story so much as let it loose by amping up the experimentation and by working with clients that wanted to break new ground.
“I think we've become more adept at accepting risk,” notes Jenkins. “We've become much better at looking at an opportunity, gauging its success and moving quickly on it. This was evident in the experiments that we're doing. Using those muscles has been really valuable. I wish the pandemic hadn't happened, but this makes us more globally competitive and more attractive to clients who want to work on startups.”
Punchard’s core story kept it from going off in a hundred unproductive directions while its willingness to make some course corrections enabled it to bring its core story even more to the fore.
“COVID forced us to go after different markets. Before COVID, it was relatively easy for us to look at the services that we were offering and manage our growth by expanding just slightly. COVID forced us to think really, really carefully about what we were offering and to whom. We had all of our eggs in a single geographic basket [Alberta]. By being a bit more diversified geographically, I think that's creating strength for us in the future. It's also changing how we think about hiring. We're hiring staff outside of the province for the first time and we probably wouldn't have considered that before. We were a physical company with an office and we wrapped our culture in that physicality. And now we're trying to discover how we can do those same things at a distance.”
People power
Punchcard has been able to expand its client base during COVID through a combination of open mindedness, risk taking, hard word, good leadership, help in the form of the wage subsidy, and a clear sense of its core story. But there is another adaptive trait that underpins all of this: good relationships and mutual trust.
“Our organization really does believe that if we put people first, our profit is going to follow,” says Jenkins. As we've been working through the pandemic, we're noticing that our team is stronger than ever. It’s been a group effort.”
This brings us back to the second overarching challenge Punchcard faced. The company had a strong team in part because they did things together in shared physical spaces. From playing hooky to go see a movie on a Friday to regular team lunches to brewing their own company beer (Punchbräu), proactive steps were taken to ensure strong and positive relationships among the staff.
But these sorts of activities were suddenly not feasible with everyone working from home due to the pandemic.
Jenkins talks about how they have tried to overcome this setback: “We have a really tight-knit team. And so one thing that we've done is a number of virtual town halls. We didn't have to do this before because we shared space together. We’ve done a lot of physically distanced walking meetings in the river valley. The operations team spends a lot of time dropping stuff off at people's houses like cupcakes to mark birthdays. But at the end of the day, I want my team to stay safe, and I want their families to stay safe. Now that we're moving into the cold months, I think this is where we're going to start seeing some cracks begin to show.”
The efforts to go beyond Zoom calls have been helpful, but ultimately it is the company’s core values that are driving the ongoing sense of teamwork.
“Our values follow a story arc,” says Jenkins. “We show up, we take risks, and we ship it. That’s the agility piece. We open up to what makes us unique. That's about inclusivity. We team up because we're stronger together. That's about teamwork. We stand up and do what's right. I call that our campsite rule. It’s about integrity and leaving the campsite cleaner than when we got there.”
“But the two core values that the pandemic has really driven home for us are step up and make an impact and work towards mastering your craft. These values have helped our staff take ownership over the situation. Our team worked harder because they realized that we were all in this together.”
“People brought new ideas forward. They innovated in ways that we probably wouldn't have seen before. Because we gave people the flexibility to be able to take ownership of the situation, I think we've built a stronger team than we've ever had before.”
A people company that does tech stuff
All eleven of the adaptive traits we identified during our research for Spiders in Space were in full force as the Punchcard team pressed forward through the fog of the pandemic. But the traits aren’t a tonic that cures unwanted change and enables successful adapting. Rather, they’re more like muscles that, if kept in good shape, help us get over the hurdles unwanted change presents.
All of the adaptive muscles flexed by Punchcard during the pandemic are important, but the steadfast trust in its people stands out. This trust did not appear out of nowhere. It was built on top of the company’s core values and the commitment to them by its leadership. As a result, when the pandemic came along, Punchcard had the muscle memory to punch its way forward.
We wish to thank Sam Jenkins for taking the time to share Punchcard's story with us. If you would like a hard copy of Spiders in Space: Successfully Adapting to Unwanted Change, visit the "ABOUT TODD" tab at the top of the page and go to BOOKS. An ebook version is also available from Amazon.
Finding New Markets in the Middle of the Mayhem
Modern Rentals pivots in the face of the pandemic
10-NOV-2020
____________________________________________________________
“It’s your people who make or break you, and we have good people.”
“It would have been a record year for us,” says Scott Henuset. “We had joined together several companies to capitalize on economies of scale and to service our customers even better.”
Suzanne and Scott Henuset are owners of Modern Rentals, and they had spent years building Modern Rentals into one of the largest event rental companies in Alberta. The business provides everything you’d need to host a major event, festival, or party. From giant tents and banquet tables to cool sofas and dinnerware, they rent it.
Before COVID came to Canada, Suzanne and Scott were getting signals that 2020 might have some curveballs in store. “We get some of our inventory from China, so we were aware of the virus and its impact in January,” recalls Scott. “Factories in China were closing down, but we didn't realize it would hit North America so hard as well.”
Leaving Las Vegas
In early March, the Henusets were in Las Vegas with their VP of Operations, Jason McKay, attending a major industry conference.
“We actually went back and forth on whether we should go to Vegas because there were already rumblings about COVID,” says Suzanne. “In the end we decided to go, but with each passing day, each passing hour, it became more and more serious.”
News about the virus became so alarming that the three of them headed home early, going to the airport several hours before their flight so they could avoid contact with others. That was March 11.
And then it happened.
By the time they touched down in Calgary, a pandemic had been declared and Scott and Suzanne’s plans for 2020 were in tatters. Festivals, weddings, parties and all sorts of summer events started to cancel. Throughout March and April, it became clear that the spring of 2020 wasn’t going to go as planned. They remained hopeful that the big summer events around the Calgary Stampede would still go ahead, but by the end of April, Stampede cancelled as well.
No events meant no event rentals. What was supposed to be a banner year for the business was quickly turning into a nightmare. The careful budgeting and planning Suzanne and Scott had been doing was suddenly moot. Or was it?
A good spreadsheet goes a long way
“I actually think it was a blessing that I had just finished the budget for the coming fiscal year because we had accurate financial information and a good understanding of what our business was and where it was going,” recalls Suzanne. “That preparedness gave us the ability to make some quick changes to our planning.”
Going into the pandemic with good financial planning and well-organized estimates made the pivot somewhat easier.
This was the first of several traits the Henusets possessed that helped them adapt: good planning and knowing your financial story. Suzanne and Scott had to make a lot of changes to their plans and budget, but having these elements in place meant that they didn’t have to start from scratch. It’s a bit like a general preparing for battle. Even the most brilliant strategy may have to be scrapped after the shooting starts, but it still helps to go in knowing the terrain, how much ammunition you have, the size of the enemy army, and so on.
Good accounting and a clear sense of the strengths and weaknesses of their business was helpful, but it couldn’t ward off the ill effects of the pandemic. This led to some necessary, but still difficult, decisions. With no revenue coming in because of the lockdown, Scott and Suzanne were forced to lay off most of their staff.
“It wasn't fun,” Scott recalls. “We went from having conversations of how we were going to find enough people to do all this work to conversations about laying off almost the entire staff.”
The speed of the transition was startling. In normal times, companies might have months or even years to adjust to a changing economic situation. But when COVID hit, it was a matter of hours. “We got home from Vegas and I started really reading the news. That’s when I said to Scott, we need to act fast,” says Suzanne.
It became clear that the pandemic might be around for quite awhile. That’s when Scott and Suzanne sat down with the remaining staff and started scenario planning. Was the shutdown going to last a month? Two months? A year?
“Not only was there no money coming in, we still had bills to pay. In addition, we had to return a large amount of cash to customers who had put down deposits,” says Scott. “The biggest job at the start was talking to everyone who had made a deposit and figuring out how we were going to manage that. Did they need their money back today or were they going to postpone until next year? All of that work was time consuming and a big drain on our bank account.”
Emotion was also a huge part of the process. “I remember crying with the staff,” Suzanne says. “This is a team. These people are really important. But we had to do it for the long term health of the business. We knew if we could survive this, we could hire them back.” As noted in our book “Spiders in Space: Successfully adapting to Unwanted Change,” you have to put on your own oxygen mask first before you can help others.
This points to another trait common to successful adapters: mental toughness. It’s far worse to be on the receiving end of a layoff, but it’s no picnic for business owners who genuinely care about their employees. Whether it is laying off staff or something equally awful, adapting to unwanted change creates moments when the horrific situation can paralyze you. The emotions don’t go away, but adapters play through them. This is why it is so important to recognize the mental toll adapting can take and practice as much self-care as possible.
Scott and Suzanne briefly considered simply shutting down—at least temporarily—until large events started to return and the business could plan and operate somewhat normally. But because of some lessons learned in the past, they ruled this out.
“This isn't the first time we've dealt with sudden change,” Scott says “And one of the things we learned is you have a choice to become better. It can either make you better or it can make you suck. So right off the go, we thought to ourselves: ‘How are we going to be better from this’?”
Having ruled out closing shop, they chose to get better by making use of the down time for projects that they’d been putting off such as organizing their warehouse. The remaining team cleaned tents, reorganized the warehouse and took stock of their physical assets—things that needed to get done anyway, but always seemed to be set aside for another day.
“The cleaning and organizing was so important to get done. Before, the warehouse was creating inefficiencies,” says Suzanne. “To be honest, it was a gift.”
We all need somebody to lean on
While the down time may have been a gift, it didn’t pay the bills. The company was bleeding cash and Suzanne and Scott still had no idea when large events would start up again. With only one employee remaining in late March, Scott and Suzanne got some help that made a considerable difference: the federal government’s wage subsidy. The program allowed them to resume paying a skeleton team and highlights another important trait associated with adaptability: seek help and take it. Too often, pride or an overzealous independent attitude blocks potential adapters from seeing the help they need.
“As soon as we understood what the wage subsidy was going to be, we brought everybody’s pay back as close as we could to the wages they were earning before,” recalls Suzanne.
Go team!
“We had some incredible staff members who kept coming in even though we had let them go and couldn’t pay them,” recalls Scott.
“They’re just the best team and the best people you could ever wish for. They are such great people. This bonded us all so much more. Everyone feels more connected as a result of what happened,” says Suzanne. The core team of Arturo, Brielle, Carol, Catia, Drew, Jacquie, Jason, Katrina and Petros were essential in keeping the operations running.
That sense of teamwork and commitment to the operation by their employees was critical to the company’s ability to adapt to change. This doesn’t happen by accident. When unwanted change forces you to adapt, the relationships you’ve built—whether with your staff, customers, suppliers or the broader community—will be instrumental to your success.
For the Henusets, several traits of adaptability were already present when the pandemic hit: they had an excellent sense of their budget and their business, they were mentally tough, they had a committed team of employees, and they got some help in the form of the wage subsidy.
But the tough work hadn’t even started yet. They still had to pivot and find new markets for their tents, furniture and rental equipment.
“We were trying to figure out how to use our stuff in different ways, because obviously the ways we previously used everything wasn't going to happen for the foreseeable future. So we were trying to come up with new ways to use what we had to generate income,” says Suzanne.
One pivot to a new market was toward car and truck dealerships which used the huge tents to protect their vehicles from hail. Unlike the festivals and Stampede events, which need a tent for a few days, vehicle dealerships required long term rentals. This changed the business model from a quick turn-around rental to one that required a tent to be in place for months.
“Before COVID, (the dealerships) wouldn't be able to rent the tent for a long period of time because they wouldn't be available and it would be too expensive for them,” says Suzanne. But the situation had changed and the tents were now just sitting in the warehouse. And while it is more profitable to set up and tear down a tent 50 times through the summer, the long-term rentals to the dealerships became a viable alternative during COVID.
Aware that the business model is different from renting festival tents, Scott and Suzanne are now in the early stages of setting up a separate company focused on hail structures, called Modern Hail Structures. They’d happily trade this for no pandemic, but it’s an example of how positive by-products can come from a conscious effort to adapt to unwanted change.
“We were able to utilize our inventory of tents for a new purpose in long-term rental. So we asked ourselves, how do we utilize our other stuff in different ways?”
The open-mindedness to new business models and new customer markets is another trait of successful adaptation. Without it, a business can get stuck simply waiting for the old market to return. And if it doesn’t, the company is doomed to fail. Just ask Blockbuster.
Less is more
Another pivot for Modern Rentals was the way they approached one of their traditional markets: private parties and weddings. With COVID restricting large gatherings of people inside buildings, new opportunities were created.
“We’ve done fewer weddings this year,” Suzanne says, “but the dollar value has been higher.” The company had always rented furniture like chairs and tables to wedding events, but now they were renting more tents as well. “If you were holding your reception in a hall, you ran the risk of getting it shut down (due to COVID). So more people started renting tents.”
“We were able to make their tents so gorgeous! We did some incredibly beautiful weddings. This year we did probably some of my favorite weddings ever. Because they were tented, they were smaller and we had the chance to do them up so beautifully. Many people had a budget set aside for a large wedding—some of them destination weddings—and then all of a sudden they were doing it in their backyard with only 20 people.”
The COVID restrictions worked in favour of tented weddings because of different rules around indoor and outdoor events. It was actually easier and less restrictive to host an event outdoors with the use of a tent.
This created an opportunity for the company to rent more decor and furnishings, giving each event that special WOW factor. For most of the couples, the down-sized tent wedding likely ended up costing them far less than the ceremony on the beach in Maui, or the 250-plate event at a fancy hotel. But for Modern, it generated higher income per event.
“For us, the value of a single wedding was probably up four to five times from last year,” says Suzanne. “Our tented wedding bookings for next year are way higher than they’ve ever been before. There's already probably four or five weekends next summer when we can't take any more orders.”
Does it spark joy?
Another trait that the couple brought to their business and their ability to pivot was passion.
“I'm a chartered accountant,” chuckles Suzanne, referring to her professional designation that didn’t fill all her passions. “At one point, I said, I want a business where I actually love what we're doing. And so, this business was born from my own passion.” Aside from the practical items like tents and folding chairs, Suzanne has put together a collection of beautiful furniture, stunning decor and one-of-a-kind pieces that give parties and events a unique and luxurious feel.
“I feel like I'm a treasure hunter in the world! I love finding beautiful things. I love seeing them put together. This is my passion: to see events done beautifully,” she says. “It is something I feel connected to. I still run the numbers, I get to use my creative side and also my spreadsheets. I get to put all of me into one company.”
Through Suzanne’s passion for beautiful items, Modern Rentals has accumulated items not previously available for rent in Alberta. She’s seen event furniture available in places like Los Angeles and New York, and has now made them available in western Canada.
“That's what her passion is all about,” says Scott of his wife. “Suzanne would say, ‘If I were having a wedding or a corporate event, these are the things that I’d like to have.’”
“We bring them in and everyone falls in love with them as much as she has,” he says.
Her passion and her eye for furnishings has helped propel the company, and it’s played no small part in the pivots they’ve made as a team during COVID. To be adaptable, you must have passion. It will still be a lot of hard work, but without passion, the work will grind you down.
We are family
Yet another trait that helped Scott and Suzanne pivot through COVID was good leadership—both from themselves as owners of the business, but also in thoughtfully and carefully adding to their leadership team.
“Scott and I are both busy in our other worlds, with our family and other things,” says Suzanne, hinting that the successful pivot was not all their doing. “We needed a leader for our people.” In January of 2020, they hired Jason McKay to assume a new position: VP of Operations. And that, they both agree, was a great move.
“He deserves every bit of the credit,” says Suzanne. “He worked hard. He cared. Having people that care for your people—that’s what will make you or break you.” The team that was already in place continued to gel with Jason in the new role. As Scott and Suzanne knew, he’d bring a style of leadership to the company that would go beyond building a team—it was building a family.
Putting it all together
Nothing about COVID has been easy for the company. Revenue is down considerably from 2019. The record-setting year they anticipated was not to be. They’ve reduced staff. And they don’t know when, or even if, things will return to normal.
But a crisis isn’t about what we lose, it’s about what we gain.
The adaptive process for Scott, Suzanne and the entire team at Modern Rentals was possible because a series of traits were in place. Their budget was well-prepared in advance and they knew their core story well. They were mentally tough. They had a great team in place and wisely used the wage subsidy program, both of which provided help along the way. They were open-minded to new ideas and new markets for their products. They had passion for bringing good design and beautiful things to events. And they had great leadership, both from themselves and the leader they acquired.
“I always say: be humble. Be kind. Be grateful. Be gracious,” says Suzanne. “It's taught us all these lessons.”
We wish to thank Scott and Suzanne Henuset for taking the time to share their story with us. If you would like a hard copy of Spiders in Space: Successfully Adapting to Unwanted Change, visit the "ABOUT TODD" tab at the top of the page and go to BOOKS. An ebook version is also available from Amazon.
How strong values helped a tech company adapt during the pandemic
Punchcard Systems
25-NOV-2020
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“If we weren’t making money, we had to be learning.”
The toques were the first sign of trouble to come.
“We had ordered branded toques for our team, but they didn’t arrive because the supply chain was disrupted,” recalls Sam Jenkins, Managing Partner of an Edmonton-based software development company called Punchcard Systems. “This made us realize that something big might be happening.”
Started in 2016, Punchcard creates software solutions for its clients such as automating sales processes and setting up an employee intranet. As such, it was in a relatively good position to adapt to the new conditions created by the pandemic.
“We were able to grab our laptops and work at home,” says Jenkins. “I remember going to the office a couple weeks after the lockdown started and it struck me as odd because there were desks missing and monitor cables left behind. It looked like somebody had robbed us!”
But it wasn’t as easy as you might think. There were two main problems.
Hey buddy, can you spare an app?
First, even though Punchcard’s digital products could be developed remotely and the team was well-versed in online tools, its clients suddenly either didn’t have the wherewithal to make upgrades to their tech because of the pandemic or deprioritized doing so for the same reason.
“We could work remotely, but what we weren't ready for was the impact of the pandemic on our customers. We doubled in size over the course of 2019 and our revenues were still good in March. And then, just like everybody else, the cliff appeared and we fell off,” recalls Jenkins. Most of Punchcard’s clients were large enterprises and many were in the oil and gas sector. “As budgets were readjusted to conserve cash, things were canceled.”
That was definitely problem number one, but with everyone working remotely, Punchcard’s culture and team approach were also being tested. The team was used to gathering together physically to both work and socialize. And while video meetings have a lot of advantages—especially during a pandemic—they simply can’t replicate what goes on in a vibrant office setting. (As an aside, video meetings are probably better than life in a non-vibrant office where everyone walks around like zombies when they are not sequestered in their cubicles.)
So what did Punchcard do? How did the team go about adapting to the harsher environment they found themselves in?
Let’s throw it at the wall and see if it sticks
When Sam and his team noticed that the toques didn’t show up, they immediately put on their thinking caps. You can’t always get ahead of unwanted change, but the sooner you start trying to adapt—the sooner you attune your mind to the need to adapt—the better.
“Early on in the pandemic, even before we were calling it a pandemic, we were trying to figure out how we could serve our customers a little bit more effectively.”
It would be nice when things go sideways if we could just put our heads down and keep doing what we were before, but this is a deadend. The way through to the other side is found through open mindedness, experimentation and risk taking. These adaptive processes are not sufficient to ensure a successful outcome, but they are critical prerequisites.
Punchard’s dedication to being open to new ideas is embedded in one of the six core values posted on its website: “We value different opinions, skills, and backgrounds. With our diverse perspectives comes a breadth of knowledge that can challenge our conventional ways of doing things and make things better.”
“Our very first ‘COVID experiment’ happened in mid-March,” says Jenkins. “A customer of ours texted me on a Saturday morning saying ‘I have an idea.’ I can't resist when people send stuff like that—when somebody wants to start something new. The very next day, we launched COVID-19 Continuity.” The website is a trove of information and resources intended to help businesses operate during the pandemic.
“We realized that there was going to be a gap in terms of navigating the information that would help businesses and organizations deal with COVID, so we just started working with partners to pull information into a single source.”
The gift of time
Working on this and other COVID experiments was not paying the bills, but it was a key part of the adaptive process for Punchcard.
“The experiments were meant to give us more information to be able to adapt throughout the course of the pandemic. This was made possible by the fact that we had a bunch of time that we didn't normally have. As an entrepreneur, I wasn't content to just hit pause on the business and do nothing. I wanted to make sure that if we weren't making money, we had to be learning how to deal with what the new reality was going to look like.”
As with so many other stories of successful adapting, Punchcard got some help along the way. The federal wage subsidy enabled Punchard to keep paying its staff when its business dried up due to the pandemic.
“There was a period after our revenue dropped off and before work started up again—around April to June—when we really needed the wage subsidy,” says Jenkins. “It’s not like the wage subsidy covered everything, but it made it possible for my business partner and I to say: We are not going to cut staff. We are going to keep people whole. And we are going to keep people busy. Having a purpose was, I think, really important for our staff and made being locked down a lot easier.”
Show up, take risks, and ship it
With experimentation, however, comes failure. As a long-time entrepreneur, Jenkins and his business partner knew this long before COVID came along. Punchard was, in fact, created after a previous startup went belly up. “Like all good entrepreneurs, we've stubbed our toe lots and lots of times,” notes Jenkins.
Listening to story after story of successful pivots, it’s clear that adapting to change demands that you put something on line. You have to embrace risk—and the failure that often accompanies it—as core elements of the process. This is aptly summarized by one of the company’s mantras: “Show up, take risks, and ship it.” The “ship it” part is critical because it’s not sufficient to just play around with new ideas and approaches; you have to settle on something concrete and actually produce an outcome.
“You have to finish your sprint with a completed deliverable. Part of our mantra is that you have to ship it—you have to take it to production or to market. Above all else, we have to deliver.”
There is another useful adaptive trait at work here: realistic faith. Jenkins and the team were able to operate amid a profound paradox. On the one hand, they had enough faith in themselves and their team approach to experiment. On the other hand, they didn’t expect every throw of the dice to go their way. That’s where the realism came in. Some—many—experiments fail. But if you are smart, keep at it, and have some luck on your side, you can achieve good results. Just not always. Understanding this is what practicing realist faith is all about.
The pivot
In this vein, it was a failed project involving a mobile app for sharing information among doctors that, along with the “COVID experiments,” spurred a line of business that has not only helped Punchcard get through the pandemic, but will serve it well long after it’s over.
“That project, through experimentation and iteration, helped us develop our digital product acceleration process, which we've now implemented half a dozen times. Our goal is to build useful things fast. We had some traction, but not the whole time. But again, these experiments were meant to be iterative,” explains Jenkins.
“Before COVID, our customers [typically large companies or organizations] would come to us to build a specific piece of custom software for them. During the pandemic, we’ve focused on ensuring that we know exactly what we are great at in terms of providing those services. But we’ve also been using the time that was given to us to experiment with developing our own products.” The result has been not only new products, but also new markets for Punchcard to pursue.
“I asked my business partner about this the other day,” says Jenkins. “I asked him if he feels like we're in a better spot today than we were in at the beginning of the pandemic. He sat back, thought about it, and said: ‘I wish the pandemic hadn't happened. We'd be in a better spot financially. But we’ve been able to really focus on who we are and what we do really well.’”
“Through our COVID experiments, we prototyped a bunch of different products. As a result, we're in the process of really pivoting our business away from just offering customer software services. Services will remain a big part of our business, but now we will also be launching our own platforms,” says Jenkins. “We’ve shifted our business from almost exclusively providing services to enterprise clients, to working with a range of smaller customers focused on disruption and transformation.”
This is a great pivot for Punchard (not to mention for the future growth of Alberta’s tech sector), but it’s been working because a number adaptive traits have been put to use by Jenkins and the Punchcard team.
Standing alongside the realistic faith noted above, is another adaptive trait: passion. Adapting to change is not easy and there are many (good and bad) reasons to simply throw in the towel. To get through this, you need to truly want to be doing what you are doing. You need to be willing to put in the hard work and deal with the mental and physical stress.
“Uncertainty is stressful. That's an understatement! However, because we operate with an acknowledgment of that uncertainty on a regular basis for our team, I think that has enabled us to stay strong and stay strong together.”
In this regard, a passion for your work, your cause, or your beliefs is what tends to make the difference between adapting and merely getting by, or worse, having to give up entirely.
“The customers we are working with today are very different from the customers we were working with on a regular basis in 2019. Since the pandemic started, we’ve helped half a dozen startups launch by working with them to build out their infrastructure. Doing so has unlocked a whole bunch of passion within my team. The team realized how excited they are by helping our clients do something that is almost impossible. We didn't get to do that as much with our larger clients because there's more risk aversion. So that, to me, is one of the big differences between 2019 and 2020.”
Ask your gut
It comes up in every story that ends—after being fired in the kiln of unwanted change—with a stronger person, group, business or non-profit organization: successful adapters know, believe in, and act on their core story.
“I took part in a virtual conference a couple months ago and one of the questions was: what was the one think that you invested in prior to the pandemic that has really begun to pay off? It’s something I borrowed from [University of Alberta Chancellor] Peggy Garritty, years ago; investing in our core values. We had spent a whole bunch of time writing them down and working on them and workshopping them as an organization. But it wasn't until the pandemic happened that we realized how important it was that we operated by those core values on an ongoing basis,” says Jenkins.
You need to know who you are, what you stand for, what you like doing, and what you are good at doing. Each of these things will be tested when unwanted change is in play. And if you don’t have clear answers, unwanted change will become a siren call that pulls you in too many directions.
Punchcard knew its core story going into the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t do some editing. In fact, having a clear understanding of your core story is what makes it possible to alter it without losing the main plot. This highlights another important adaptive trait: the ability to harness tension.
Sometimes, it’s best to stick with your knitting when unwanted change comes along rather than let it trick you into doing something you are not good at or don’t in your heart want to do. In these cases, knowing your core story helps prevent mission drift and foolish forays into new products and services.
Other times, however, adapting requires you to alter the course you are on. This might mean unearthing your core story or it might mean reworking it. Like tuning a piano or guitar, successful adapters harness the tension this creates rather than see it as a purely black and white situation.
In Punchcard’s case, they had achieved success providing software development services to large businesses. The company’s penchant for experimentation and risk-taking, along with other elements of its core story, were in play, but muted by the needs of their clients. When the pandemic caused their traditional market to go into hibernation, Punchard didn’t have to change its core story so much as let it loose by amping up the experimentation and by working with clients that wanted to break new ground.
“I think we've become more adept at accepting risk,” notes Jenkins. “We've become much better at looking at an opportunity, gauging its success and moving quickly on it. This was evident in the experiments that we're doing. Using those muscles has been really valuable. I wish the pandemic hadn't happened, but this makes us more globally competitive and more attractive to clients who want to work on startups.”
Punchard’s core story kept it from going off in a hundred unproductive directions while its willingness to make some course corrections enabled it to bring its core story even more to the fore.
“COVID forced us to go after different markets. Before COVID, it was relatively easy for us to look at the services that we were offering and manage our growth by expanding just slightly. COVID forced us to think really, really carefully about what we were offering and to whom. We had all of our eggs in a single geographic basket [Alberta]. By being a bit more diversified geographically, I think that's creating strength for us in the future. It's also changing how we think about hiring. We're hiring staff outside of the province for the first time and we probably wouldn't have considered that before. We were a physical company with an office and we wrapped our culture in that physicality. And now we're trying to discover how we can do those same things at a distance.”
People power
Punchcard has been able to expand its client base during COVID through a combination of open mindedness, risk taking, hard word, good leadership, help in the form of the wage subsidy, and a clear sense of its core story. But there is another adaptive trait that underpins all of this: good relationships and mutual trust.
“Our organization really does believe that if we put people first, our profit is going to follow,” says Jenkins. As we've been working through the pandemic, we're noticing that our team is stronger than ever. It’s been a group effort.”
This brings us back to the second overarching challenge Punchcard faced. The company had a strong team in part because they did things together in shared physical spaces. From playing hooky to go see a movie on a Friday to regular team lunches to brewing their own company beer (Punchbräu), proactive steps were taken to ensure strong and positive relationships among the staff.
But these sorts of activities were suddenly not feasible with everyone working from home due to the pandemic.
Jenkins talks about how they have tried to overcome this setback: “We have a really tight-knit team. And so one thing that we've done is a number of virtual town halls. We didn't have to do this before because we shared space together. We’ve done a lot of physically distanced walking meetings in the river valley. The operations team spends a lot of time dropping stuff off at people's houses like cupcakes to mark birthdays. But at the end of the day, I want my team to stay safe, and I want their families to stay safe. Now that we're moving into the cold months, I think this is where we're going to start seeing some cracks begin to show.”
The efforts to go beyond Zoom calls have been helpful, but ultimately it is the company’s core values that are driving the ongoing sense of teamwork.
“Our values follow a story arc,” says Jenkins. “We show up, we take risks, and we ship it. That’s the agility piece. We open up to what makes us unique. That's about inclusivity. We team up because we're stronger together. That's about teamwork. We stand up and do what's right. I call that our campsite rule. It’s about integrity and leaving the campsite cleaner than when we got there.”
“But the two core values that the pandemic has really driven home for us are step up and make an impact and work towards mastering your craft. These values have helped our staff take ownership over the situation. Our team worked harder because they realized that we were all in this together.”
“People brought new ideas forward. They innovated in ways that we probably wouldn't have seen before. Because we gave people the flexibility to be able to take ownership of the situation, I think we've built a stronger team than we've ever had before.”
A people company that does tech stuff
All eleven of the adaptive traits we identified during our research for Spiders in Space were in full force as the Punchcard team pressed forward through the fog of the pandemic. But the traits aren’t a tonic that cures unwanted change and enables successful adapting. Rather, they’re more like muscles that, if kept in good shape, help us get over the hurdles unwanted change presents.
All of the adaptive muscles flexed by Punchcard during the pandemic are important, but the steadfast trust in its people stands out. This trust did not appear out of nowhere. It was built on top of the company’s core values and the commitment to them by its leadership. As a result, when the pandemic came along, Punchcard had the muscle memory to punch its way forward.
We wish to thank Sam Jenkins for taking the time to share Punchcard's story with us. If you would like a hard copy of Spiders in Space: Successfully Adapting to Unwanted Change, visit the "ABOUT TODD" tab at the top of the page and go to BOOKS. An ebook version is also available from Amazon.
Finding New Markets in the Middle of the Mayhem
Modern Rentals pivots in the face of the pandemic
10-NOV-2020
____________________________________________________________
“It’s your people who make or break you, and we have good people.”
“It would have been a record year for us,” says Scott Henuset. “We had joined together several companies to capitalize on economies of scale and to service our customers even better.”
Suzanne and Scott Henuset are owners of Modern Rentals, and they had spent years building Modern Rentals into one of the largest event rental companies in Alberta. The business provides everything you’d need to host a major event, festival, or party. From giant tents and banquet tables to cool sofas and dinnerware, they rent it.
Before COVID came to Canada, Suzanne and Scott were getting signals that 2020 might have some curveballs in store. “We get some of our inventory from China, so we were aware of the virus and its impact in January,” recalls Scott. “Factories in China were closing down, but we didn't realize it would hit North America so hard as well.”
Leaving Las Vegas
In early March, the Henusets were in Las Vegas with their VP of Operations, Jason McKay, attending a major industry conference.
“We actually went back and forth on whether we should go to Vegas because there were already rumblings about COVID,” says Suzanne. “In the end we decided to go, but with each passing day, each passing hour, it became more and more serious.”
News about the virus became so alarming that the three of them headed home early, going to the airport several hours before their flight so they could avoid contact with others. That was March 11.
And then it happened.
By the time they touched down in Calgary, a pandemic had been declared and Scott and Suzanne’s plans for 2020 were in tatters. Festivals, weddings, parties and all sorts of summer events started to cancel. Throughout March and April, it became clear that the spring of 2020 wasn’t going to go as planned. They remained hopeful that the big summer events around the Calgary Stampede would still go ahead, but by the end of April, Stampede cancelled as well.
No events meant no event rentals. What was supposed to be a banner year for the business was quickly turning into a nightmare. The careful budgeting and planning Suzanne and Scott had been doing was suddenly moot. Or was it?
A good spreadsheet goes a long way
“I actually think it was a blessing that I had just finished the budget for the coming fiscal year because we had accurate financial information and a good understanding of what our business was and where it was going,” recalls Suzanne. “That preparedness gave us the ability to make some quick changes to our planning.”
Going into the pandemic with good financial planning and well-organized estimates made the pivot somewhat easier.
This was the first of several traits the Henusets possessed that helped them adapt: good planning and knowing your financial story. Suzanne and Scott had to make a lot of changes to their plans and budget, but having these elements in place meant that they didn’t have to start from scratch. It’s a bit like a general preparing for battle. Even the most brilliant strategy may have to be scrapped after the shooting starts, but it still helps to go in knowing the terrain, how much ammunition you have, the size of the enemy army, and so on.
Good accounting and a clear sense of the strengths and weaknesses of their business was helpful, but it couldn’t ward off the ill effects of the pandemic. This led to some necessary, but still difficult, decisions. With no revenue coming in because of the lockdown, Scott and Suzanne were forced to lay off most of their staff.
“It wasn't fun,” Scott recalls. “We went from having conversations of how we were going to find enough people to do all this work to conversations about laying off almost the entire staff.”
The speed of the transition was startling. In normal times, companies might have months or even years to adjust to a changing economic situation. But when COVID hit, it was a matter of hours. “We got home from Vegas and I started really reading the news. That’s when I said to Scott, we need to act fast,” says Suzanne.
It became clear that the pandemic might be around for quite awhile. That’s when Scott and Suzanne sat down with the remaining staff and started scenario planning. Was the shutdown going to last a month? Two months? A year?
“Not only was there no money coming in, we still had bills to pay. In addition, we had to return a large amount of cash to customers who had put down deposits,” says Scott. “The biggest job at the start was talking to everyone who had made a deposit and figuring out how we were going to manage that. Did they need their money back today or were they going to postpone until next year? All of that work was time consuming and a big drain on our bank account.”
Emotion was also a huge part of the process. “I remember crying with the staff,” Suzanne says. “This is a team. These people are really important. But we had to do it for the long term health of the business. We knew if we could survive this, we could hire them back.” As noted in our book “Spiders in Space: Successfully adapting to Unwanted Change,” you have to put on your own oxygen mask first before you can help others.
This points to another trait common to successful adapters: mental toughness. It’s far worse to be on the receiving end of a layoff, but it’s no picnic for business owners who genuinely care about their employees. Whether it is laying off staff or something equally awful, adapting to unwanted change creates moments when the horrific situation can paralyze you. The emotions don’t go away, but adapters play through them. This is why it is so important to recognize the mental toll adapting can take and practice as much self-care as possible.
Scott and Suzanne briefly considered simply shutting down—at least temporarily—until large events started to return and the business could plan and operate somewhat normally. But because of some lessons learned in the past, they ruled this out.
“This isn't the first time we've dealt with sudden change,” Scott says “And one of the things we learned is you have a choice to become better. It can either make you better or it can make you suck. So right off the go, we thought to ourselves: ‘How are we going to be better from this’?”
Having ruled out closing shop, they chose to get better by making use of the down time for projects that they’d been putting off such as organizing their warehouse. The remaining team cleaned tents, reorganized the warehouse and took stock of their physical assets—things that needed to get done anyway, but always seemed to be set aside for another day.
“The cleaning and organizing was so important to get done. Before, the warehouse was creating inefficiencies,” says Suzanne. “To be honest, it was a gift.”
We all need somebody to lean on
While the down time may have been a gift, it didn’t pay the bills. The company was bleeding cash and Suzanne and Scott still had no idea when large events would start up again. With only one employee remaining in late March, Scott and Suzanne got some help that made a considerable difference: the federal government’s wage subsidy. The program allowed them to resume paying a skeleton team and highlights another important trait associated with adaptability: seek help and take it. Too often, pride or an overzealous independent attitude blocks potential adapters from seeing the help they need.
“As soon as we understood what the wage subsidy was going to be, we brought everybody’s pay back as close as we could to the wages they were earning before,” recalls Suzanne.
Go team!
“We had some incredible staff members who kept coming in even though we had let them go and couldn’t pay them,” recalls Scott.
“They’re just the best team and the best people you could ever wish for. They are such great people. This bonded us all so much more. Everyone feels more connected as a result of what happened,” says Suzanne. The core team of Arturo, Brielle, Carol, Catia, Drew, Jacquie, Jason, Katrina and Petros were essential in keeping the operations running.
That sense of teamwork and commitment to the operation by their employees was critical to the company’s ability to adapt to change. This doesn’t happen by accident. When unwanted change forces you to adapt, the relationships you’ve built—whether with your staff, customers, suppliers or the broader community—will be instrumental to your success.
For the Henusets, several traits of adaptability were already present when the pandemic hit: they had an excellent sense of their budget and their business, they were mentally tough, they had a committed team of employees, and they got some help in the form of the wage subsidy.
But the tough work hadn’t even started yet. They still had to pivot and find new markets for their tents, furniture and rental equipment.
“We were trying to figure out how to use our stuff in different ways, because obviously the ways we previously used everything wasn't going to happen for the foreseeable future. So we were trying to come up with new ways to use what we had to generate income,” says Suzanne.
One pivot to a new market was toward car and truck dealerships which used the huge tents to protect their vehicles from hail. Unlike the festivals and Stampede events, which need a tent for a few days, vehicle dealerships required long term rentals. This changed the business model from a quick turn-around rental to one that required a tent to be in place for months.
“Before COVID, (the dealerships) wouldn't be able to rent the tent for a long period of time because they wouldn't be available and it would be too expensive for them,” says Suzanne. But the situation had changed and the tents were now just sitting in the warehouse. And while it is more profitable to set up and tear down a tent 50 times through the summer, the long-term rentals to the dealerships became a viable alternative during COVID.
Aware that the business model is different from renting festival tents, Scott and Suzanne are now in the early stages of setting up a separate company focused on hail structures, called Modern Hail Structures. They’d happily trade this for no pandemic, but it’s an example of how positive by-products can come from a conscious effort to adapt to unwanted change.
“We were able to utilize our inventory of tents for a new purpose in long-term rental. So we asked ourselves, how do we utilize our other stuff in different ways?”
The open-mindedness to new business models and new customer markets is another trait of successful adaptation. Without it, a business can get stuck simply waiting for the old market to return. And if it doesn’t, the company is doomed to fail. Just ask Blockbuster.
Less is more
Another pivot for Modern Rentals was the way they approached one of their traditional markets: private parties and weddings. With COVID restricting large gatherings of people inside buildings, new opportunities were created.
“We’ve done fewer weddings this year,” Suzanne says, “but the dollar value has been higher.” The company had always rented furniture like chairs and tables to wedding events, but now they were renting more tents as well. “If you were holding your reception in a hall, you ran the risk of getting it shut down (due to COVID). So more people started renting tents.”
“We were able to make their tents so gorgeous! We did some incredibly beautiful weddings. This year we did probably some of my favorite weddings ever. Because they were tented, they were smaller and we had the chance to do them up so beautifully. Many people had a budget set aside for a large wedding—some of them destination weddings—and then all of a sudden they were doing it in their backyard with only 20 people.”
The COVID restrictions worked in favour of tented weddings because of different rules around indoor and outdoor events. It was actually easier and less restrictive to host an event outdoors with the use of a tent.
This created an opportunity for the company to rent more decor and furnishings, giving each event that special WOW factor. For most of the couples, the down-sized tent wedding likely ended up costing them far less than the ceremony on the beach in Maui, or the 250-plate event at a fancy hotel. But for Modern, it generated higher income per event.
“For us, the value of a single wedding was probably up four to five times from last year,” says Suzanne. “Our tented wedding bookings for next year are way higher than they’ve ever been before. There's already probably four or five weekends next summer when we can't take any more orders.”
Does it spark joy?
Another trait that the couple brought to their business and their ability to pivot was passion.
“I'm a chartered accountant,” chuckles Suzanne, referring to her professional designation that didn’t fill all her passions. “At one point, I said, I want a business where I actually love what we're doing. And so, this business was born from my own passion.” Aside from the practical items like tents and folding chairs, Suzanne has put together a collection of beautiful furniture, stunning decor and one-of-a-kind pieces that give parties and events a unique and luxurious feel.
“I feel like I'm a treasure hunter in the world! I love finding beautiful things. I love seeing them put together. This is my passion: to see events done beautifully,” she says. “It is something I feel connected to. I still run the numbers, I get to use my creative side and also my spreadsheets. I get to put all of me into one company.”
Through Suzanne’s passion for beautiful items, Modern Rentals has accumulated items not previously available for rent in Alberta. She’s seen event furniture available in places like Los Angeles and New York, and has now made them available in western Canada.
“That's what her passion is all about,” says Scott of his wife. “Suzanne would say, ‘If I were having a wedding or a corporate event, these are the things that I’d like to have.’”
“We bring them in and everyone falls in love with them as much as she has,” he says.
Her passion and her eye for furnishings has helped propel the company, and it’s played no small part in the pivots they’ve made as a team during COVID. To be adaptable, you must have passion. It will still be a lot of hard work, but without passion, the work will grind you down.
We are family
Yet another trait that helped Scott and Suzanne pivot through COVID was good leadership—both from themselves as owners of the business, but also in thoughtfully and carefully adding to their leadership team.
“Scott and I are both busy in our other worlds, with our family and other things,” says Suzanne, hinting that the successful pivot was not all their doing. “We needed a leader for our people.” In January of 2020, they hired Jason McKay to assume a new position: VP of Operations. And that, they both agree, was a great move.
“He deserves every bit of the credit,” says Suzanne. “He worked hard. He cared. Having people that care for your people—that’s what will make you or break you.” The team that was already in place continued to gel with Jason in the new role. As Scott and Suzanne knew, he’d bring a style of leadership to the company that would go beyond building a team—it was building a family.
Putting it all together
Nothing about COVID has been easy for the company. Revenue is down considerably from 2019. The record-setting year they anticipated was not to be. They’ve reduced staff. And they don’t know when, or even if, things will return to normal.
But a crisis isn’t about what we lose, it’s about what we gain.
The adaptive process for Scott, Suzanne and the entire team at Modern Rentals was possible because a series of traits were in place. Their budget was well-prepared in advance and they knew their core story well. They were mentally tough. They had a great team in place and wisely used the wage subsidy program, both of which provided help along the way. They were open-minded to new ideas and new markets for their products. They had passion for bringing good design and beautiful things to events. And they had great leadership, both from themselves and the leader they acquired.
“I always say: be humble. Be kind. Be grateful. Be gracious,” says Suzanne. “It's taught us all these lessons.”
We wish to thank Scott and Suzanne Henuset for taking the time to share their story with us. If you would like a hard copy of Spiders in Space: Successfully Adapting to Unwanted Change, visit the "ABOUT TODD" tab at the top of the page and go to BOOKS. An ebook version is also available from Amazon.