How to manage your business through chaos

Staying informed about the tariffs and figuring out their effects will require research.  

“It’s created extra paperwork, extra tracking,” she said in mid-April. “All the conversations I had with people last week are not conversations they were having a year ago. They’re digging to try to find information. They’re sitting on webinars, they’re going to events to try to learn as much as they can. ... We were already hearing things are stuck at border control and customs. Ships are already getting delayed coming into port.” 

Should the U.S. continue to collect the duties and move ahead with plans involving the ones currently in abeyance till July, some would be stacked on top of each other. In some cases, products that cross borders in the manufacturing process could be subject to tariffs more than once; in other cases, products might include components subject to different or multiple tariff rates.  

Confused yet?  

“I can only imagine what it’s like in purchasing departments of companies today,” Harbour said. 

Because the full tariff schedule isn’t in effect, companies will have challenges quoting prices and projecting costs. But Harbour advised against trying to adjust purchasing plans on the fly, though she said some companies have tried to time their actions in line with scheduled announcements.  

“I’m not counseling people to change their philosophy of purchasing, because that just creates more chaos,” she said. 

To begin to make sense of all of it, she recommended that companies figure out where their supplies and products fit on the Harmonized Tariff Schedule, which defines millions of products. Better get acquainted with who ships what, and from where. 

“The problem is,” she said, “it’s just happened, and there’s stuff in transit and in movement. So you’ve got to talk to your customers, put a plan together, one that’s methodical and understood. Talk to your advisers, and make sure you know what the decisions are. You have to be thoughtful and careful. And leaders are going to have to lead through this. It’s not all bad, but it’s not all going to be great, either.” 

Welcoming change 

You don’t have to be swept off in the whirlwind — there are other ways to cope with what’s happening. 

“I wake up every day with a new idea, because I heard something has changed, and there’s a new problem to be solved, and I have a new idea to solve it,” Roberts said.  

Though the novelty of a new situation excites her, Roberts acknowledges others are apprehensive. 

To meet the moment, she said business leaders can look to what they’ve done in the past and determine whether there are already tried-and-true strategies they can still rely on.  

“I would suggest that the folks that are resistant to the changes really think about ... a mindset of, ‘How can I apply what I think has worked and mold that into what is coming down the pipeline? Because I can’t change what’s coming down the pipeline,’ ” she said. 

In some ways, compared with coping through a crisis, Homkes said dealing with change is harder, because, unlike a natural disaster or a heart attack, unrelenting change presents no timeline or recovery schedule.  

“A lot of leaders like to pride themselves on being great in a crisis, but being great in a crisis is different than being great in uncertainty,” Homkes said. “Crises are time-based. ... We can react to the crisis, and we’re willing to do things because that crisis will abate. Uncertainty — and frankly, why uncertainty is so unsettling — it’s not time-based. We could be in this period of uncertainty for months, if not years. And that’s why we need to shift from, ‘Hey, my team’s great in a crisis,’ to building a team that’s great in uncertainty.” That requires agility, quick insights, collaboration.  

But panic won’t help. 

Instead, Harbour advised studying the situation and talking it out.  

 “We can’t knee-jerk react,” Harbour said. “It's like ... ‘Don’t make decisions when you get in the middle of a divorce because there’s chaos going on in your life.’ There’s chaos going on in the lives of these companies. They have to do their research ... then, they have to map those supply chains and then understand what their levers are. They have to talk to their customers and understand what they’ll be able to pass on,” in terms of costs. 

For Roberts, change and risk underscore the value of communication and continuous learning. She said leaders should check in with both their customers and suppliers, as well as their employees.  

In this way, they might uncover an unmet need, or help alleviate anxiety. With buy-in from the workforce, they’re better positioned to weather what comes next.  

“If leaders can understand, identify those external factors, which is a leadership competency, and understand how that relates to their business products and services, and then articulate that — and this is the key thing — articulate that, and communicate that to their workforce and their ecosystem, that kind of blunts the shock and awe of the constant change, because you can plan around that, once you understand the root cause and the desired outcomes. And then position the business to be able to benefit,” Roberts said. 

Know thyself 

For Homkes, in an era of change, the path ahead might not lead directly from Point A to Point B, but instead require a bit of dead reckoning, determined by each business according to its underlying principles.  

The best teams will pick a route, but stay poised to reassess, adjust, take in more data, reassess and adjust again. 

Homkes says it’s the beliefs that guide and define your business. Identify and stay true to them, and you’re on your way — regardless of how the business environment evolves.  

“Linear models work when we can predict what’s going to happen next and when the variables are known, but when we’re not in a linear model, where the variables are still emerging, then we need to shift to preparation mode. ... We need to make decisions based on beliefs, not always waiting for established facts. ... If we wait until everything is a known market fact, we’re moving slower than everybody else,” she said.  

It’s the difference between keeping your head down and pushing ahead — which can work well when conditions are stable and calm — and maintaining what Homkes calls a “heads-up learning mode.” 

Roberts, who’s trained in the lean manufacturing approach, said a key aspect of the philosophy — continuous learning — is critical to success. 

Both leaders and workers need to constantly learn on the job, as they adapt and respond to change.  

 Like Homkes, she emphasized the importance of applying insights to change, not just reacting. 

 “This goes back to lean,” she said. “What [new] problem needs to be solved that we are positioned and able to address?” 

Key to Homkes’ reset-and-thrive approach is identifying what she calls kickers and killers — the actions and conditions that present opportunities for your company, as well as those that could destroy your business. In the midst of that, she advises defining no-regret moves, meaning, “even if we got our belief wrong, we wouldn’t regret having made them.” 

Instead of swinging wildly from hour to hour with the headlines, Homkes said companies should still focus on the bottom line — value creation — and set their sights on the middle distance of couple years out. They should try to identify a handful of trends that might most influence them over the coming years, and begin strategizing for those trends through the lens of kickers, killers and no-regret moves.  

“The tariffs are a great example of this,” she said. “If in December you had planned for 50 percent tariffs, you would have made a lot of bad decisions as an organization. But if you had done nothing and assumed, ‘Oh, they’re not going to happen,’ you would not have been set up for some of the chaos of the past three months. But if you’d gone into preparation mode, you would have spent the time as a team talking about your beliefs. You would have met with your partners and supply chain partners to understand their beliefs. You would have understood where your big risks are.” 

One thing you wouldn’t be doing?  

“Waiting until everything becomes known or established,” she said. 

As Homkes sees it, there are two potential pitfalls in leading amidst rapid change: One is diving in without thinking; the other is digging in.  

“Trap 1 is just plow ahead and say, ‘Yes, it’s chaotic, but I’ve got a plan. I’m going to implement my plan no matter what.’ I call that delusion,” she said. “Trap 2 is just as much of a trap, and that’s paralysis. ... We say, ‘Well, let’s not make any decisions in Q1, let’s wait until Q3, when — my favorite line — ‘the Trump administration has settled down.’ Like there’s going to be a date when that happens.” 

Leaders can table decisions, but they can’t put on hold the need for leadership. Some other company might capitalize in the midst of their indecision. 

“I’m hearing this from a lot of executives,” Homkes said. “ ‘We keep punting these major decisions.’ Well, that’s putting your company into this ongoing holding pattern, which is also not good for value creation.” 

Balancing good with bad 

In mid-April, Harbour was hearing from some clients expressing anxiety over the cost of tariffs, and others looking to tap into new possibilities. 

“We are already seeing customers say that they’re quoting things that they have not normally quoted in the past,” Harbour said. “... I do think there will be positive momentum for reshoring. And we have open capacity in plastics. Injection molders have open capacity. ... If I’m shipping parts to countries that then have a reciprocal tariff, or if I’m a molder that has a plant in the U.S. and a plant in Mexico, we might see some impact there. There’s definitely winners and losers, and a lot of the impact comes back to what the cost is to the consumer.” 

Ultimately, she said during the webinar, “All companies and employees will be affected in some way by tariffs, some better than others.” 

One set of manufacturers that might see a significant bump from tariffs are mold makers. Tariffs on China-made molds now total 170 percent — a figure Harbour said represents a significant transformation of the playing field for domestic suppliers.  

On one hand, for companies that need to buy molds, the tariffs might induce sticker shock. But for those who make molds, it could be a domestic seller’s market.  

 “One-hundred-seventy percent is monumental. We were at 35, 45 [percent] in the first couple weeks [and] months of this year. That was still OK. The Chinese are lower-enough cost, that was OK, but 170 percent, that’s a very different ball game,” Harbour said. “So, yes, it’s a huge opportunity. We should capitalize on it. We definitely have some capacity available for tools, depending on what it is. If I was making very, very large tools for cars, a little less capacity; if I’m making smaller molds, we have a ton of capacity here. ... We have people sitting with empty shops or partially empty shops.” 

She emphasized going after those jobs in a smart way, rather than looking to “be greedy.” 

Among other reshoring candidates are equipment manufacturers, some of whom, Harbour said, rushed their foreign-made machinery into the United States ahead of tariff announcements, to avoid duties. 

"Many of them,” she said, “are also looking at their supply chains, and, ‘Should we be assembling here in the States? And how do we actually go about our strategy?’ And they need to revisit it, too.”  

While some companies, such as mold makers, might add jobs, Harbour said she is worried that rising prices ultimately will hurt consumer demand, meaning fewer dollars to go toward innovation. 

Overall, she was measured in her reshoring forecast: “I don’t want people thinking this is going to be this big, huge movement of manufacturing, with hundreds of thousands of jobs created.” 

Meanwhile, Harry Moser, who founded the Reshoring Initiative in 2010 to advocate for the return of manufacturing jobs to the U.S., said before Trump’s Liberation Day he was anticipating new opportunities, especially for the U.S. plastics industry, which stands to benefit from ample domestic shale-gas reserves. 

“If you’re going to pick a product category to reshore, I think injection molding is one of the best,” Moser said.  

“If you’re a job shop, if you’re an injection molder … your customers are facing uncertainty. They don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s a possibility they’ll have significant tariffs on them in three months, six months … and especially if the tariffs have already been announced, but you’re not sure how long they’re going to last, it’s a perfect time to get them to reshore and buy components from you,” he said.   

Figuring out who stands to gain — or has a problem your shop might solve — is one way to take advantage of the tariffs, or at least mitigate their effects, the consultants said. 

They urged leaders to listen and keep an open mind.  

“Now is a wonderful time to understand what consumers really value the most in a product,” Homkes said. "Now, your partners or vendors are going to be a lot more honest about what they need from you. Customers are going to be a lot more clear about what they’re willing to try or not. In uncertainty, customers, consumers, partners, vendors, suppliers are much more honest and transparent with you. ... 

“lf you lean into this and use this as a learning environment, you will get the growth insights and grow. Most organizations, as soon as things get chaotic, they get so operationally minded and operationally focused, they’re actually shutting off the learning taps.” 

Coming out ahead 

Change represents a unique opportunity to learn, and to burnish the skills the future will require, according to Homkes, who encouraged leaders to consider, “You are shaping and crafting the environment of the future.”  

Getting there might just call for a few more zigs and zags than you’d hope.  

“Uncertainty is a new certainty. Will things be as chaotic in 2029 or even 2027 as they are right now? I think a lot of CEOs would say, ‘I hope not,’ right? But anytime you signal to your shareholders, your organization, your employees, your team, that there will be a time where you get to return to comfort mode, you are holding your organization back,” she said. 

The tumult could bring both good news and bad. The consultants say be prepared for both. 

For Roberts, who loves change, the present moment represents what could be a momentous shift, giving those ready for it a chance to put their stamp on a transformation within industry. 

“It’s the world that we live in. It’s the world of the future, and it’s so many things changing in tandem,” she said. “So, you have political changes, you have technology changes, you have economic changes, you have global conflicts and wars. You have all these things happening at the same time. And I actually believe we may also be in the midst of a once-in-a-century-type of change with respect to workforce and how work is accomplished.”