Resourcefulness and Resilience

Supply Chain has given me something that I had never expected - story after story that even the best writers in Hollywood couldn't dream up. One of my favorite stories ties to resourcefulness and resilience - neither of which are built in perfect conditions. They’re built when things go wrong and you don’t have the luxury of waiting for someone else to fix it.

Years ago, when I owned a fulfillment business in Western New York, we had just replaced the roof on our warehouse. End of winter. Snow piled high. What I didn’t know was that the roofers failed to seal a two-inch seam. When the sun came out and the snow started to melt, that tiny seam turned into a waterfall stretching more than a hundred feet inside the warehouse. And to up the stakes - we had a prospective client visiting within days.

For nearly two months, it sounded like it was raining indoors. I could have shut down. I could have panicked. I could have blamed the contractor and waited. Instead, I got resourceful.

I gathered the team and we built a water capture system out of sheets of plastic - stretching fifteen feet wide and spanning a little over one hundred feet. We funneled the water into trash cans. We daisy-chained those trash cans together with sump pumps. Pump by pump, we pushed the water across the warehouse and out to the docks - draining it into the truck court.

It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t ideal. But orders kept shipping.

That season taught me something I’ve never forgotten. Resilience isn’t loud - it’s practical. It’s looking at a waterfall in your warehouse and saying, “Alright. Let’s build something.”

Adversity doesn’t ask if you’re ready. It just shows up. Resourcefulness is deciding you’ll keep operating anyway.

As for that prospective client - we signed him! He was impressed by our ability to overcome adversity and for creating a relaxing warehouse environment - complete with a water feature.