Do you want to build a strong company? Start by doubling down.

As I move around the business world these days I am encountering a great deal of anxiety about the future.  Will economies decline?  Will we go into recession?  Will my industry survive?  Concern about the global economy is nothing new, but business leaders these days are obsessed with making sure that they are doing everything that they can to craft a company that can withstand a wide range of plausible futures.

Part of that comes from designing structural stability into the firm, in just the same way that homes in hurricane-prone areas are constructed with stronger supporting beams anchored to robust foundations.  In business, structural stability comes from creating corporate mechanisms that exhibit economic strength.  We have learned over the years that one proven path to a stronger firm is the reinforcing loop.

Smart, forward-thinking companies have been engineering reinforcing loops into their businesses for decades, in many cases without even knowing it.  A reinforcing loop is a feedback circuit that builds upon itself, self-propelling the company towards its goals.

Let me give you an example: years ago, we did some work for an airline that was near the bottom of major airlines in profitability, on-time performance, baggage handling—everywhere you looked the airline was failing in its operations, in spite of a well-recognized brand and a coveted route system.  A brand new, operationally-focused CEO arrived and quickly set about creating what are known as operating programs—small but potent bits of re-engineering and continuous improvement across every facet of the business…hundreds of individual initiatives that were executed and measured by a guerilla team of highly motivated employees.  But here’s the kicker: this CEO earmarked the savings gained from those programs to invest in more programs.  He “closed the loop” between good work outcomes driving more good work.  Over 5 years that airline went from the bottom of the ops food chain to one of the best run airlines in the business for several years running after that.  Had he not created a reinforcing loop that doubled down, the airline would have only received a temporary blip of performance only to regress back to its mediocre past.  We see this latter effect a lot these days with “corporate initiatives” that are one-time shots of improvement.

That CEO intuitively grasped the awesome mathematical power of doubling.  To illustrate, if I take a piece of paper and fold it over that paper then it becomes twice as thick.  Fold it a second time and it’s four times as thick.  If I keep folding it only 30 more times, that piece of paper becomes 70 miles tall.  This is the force at your fingertips when you harness the power of doubling.

If you think hard enough, you can find many examples in your own business that can be strengthened by the power of doubling, almost by magic.  This could be a manufactured product that moves down a learning curve of cost reduction as volume grows, or a supply chain network that improves performance with each node that is added to it.  It could be a customer service feature that accelerates word of mouth adoption.  These opportunities for creating beneficial reinforcing loops are hiding in plain sight.  You just need to train your mind to find them, draw them out, and build them, one at a time, just like the airline CEO.  The very best firms we’ve seen are ones that have many of these feedback loops all operating at once.  Stellar firms make a deliberate effort to build reinforcing loops at critical junctures in their value chains.

So, the next time you are fretting about the future, just double down.  You will be stronger for it.