Multiple Redundancies in Business
I recently watched a show called MythBusters in which they tested the strength of duck tape through a variety of fascinating experiments.
One of these experiments involved taping a full-grown man (co-host Adam Savage) to a board and flipping the board upside down so he was suspended facing the floor.
Of course, to do the experiment, they used a lot of individual strips of tape, somewhere around 50-80 strips. As they suspended Adam, he said he wasn’t afraid at all (and that he was actually quite comfortable) because the “system” they had used to suspend him had so many redundancies built into it.
For Adam to fall to the floor would have required the failure of the majority of the strips of tape all at the exact same time, a situation that would have been nearly impossible.
This reminded me that multiple redundancies are not only important in situations requiring your safety, but also in business. The more redundancies you have built-in, the “safer” your business is from the unexpected.
For example, if you run an online business, the WORST you could do is have a one-page web site with a single source of traffic. Not only is your “model” easily copied, but it’s extremely vulnerable.
What happens if your single source of traffic dries up? What if your visitor doesn’t resonate with or respond to your one page of copy?
Here’s an example of a better system with multiple redundancies (click to expand in a new tab):
In this mind map, you’ll see there are multiple redundancies on both sides of the equation: many sources of traffic as well as many destinations for the traffic to go to.
By having multiple articles, there is more chance of a search engine indexing your content, and there is more chance of another site owner linking back to you. (The more articles, the better.)
And by having multiple sources of traffic, you’re not dependent on any one source to keep your online business going. Should you fall out of favor with one source (say, Google), then you still have many other sources still sending you traffic.
It doesn’t really matter if we’re talking about online business vs. off-line business, either. If you’re using direct mail, you could build multiple redundancies by having an online advertising strategy to compliment your direct mail efforts. Or you might even run classifieds or space ads.
Boeing, an aerospace and defense contractor, made a conscious decision decades ago to pursue a two-pronged business strategy. They developed a commercial side of their business for times of peace and a military side of their business for times of war. This was their broad overarching strategy in case of weakness in a particular market segment.
Ultimately, you can create multiple redundancies in many different ways. You just need to think strategically about your business and then take action to make those redundancies a reality.
What have you done in your business to create multiple redundancies? Leave a comment and share your ideas. Thanks!
-Ryan M. Healy
