The Trust Economy
The Right to Be Believed
The Business of Beginning Again
What 25 years in business taught me about resilience, reinvention, staying relevant and the power of Sopossible.
By Sophie L. Gibson
Founder & CEO, VIVO360, Inc. (VIVO)
After more than 25 years of building VIVO360, Inc. (VIVO) one thing I know for certain is that businesses rarely grow in a straight line. There are extraordinary years and difficult ones, periods when everything seems to be working and moments when circumstances completely outside your control change the equation almost overnight.
COVID-19 was one of those moments for us. When the pandemic arrived, VIVO lost significant business almost immediately, including major clients whose own industries had essentially come to a standstill. Like business leaders everywhere, we were suddenly confronting a question for which there was no proven answer: What do we do now?
There was no perfect playbook. We reduced overhead, changed how we operated and made difficult decisions about what we could afford to maintain. At the same time, we protected the capabilities we believed would matter when the crisis eventually passed.
We also learned—or perhaps relearned—one of the most important lessons in business: diversity isn’t only a social principle. It is a business strategy.
A company that depends too heavily on one client, one sector, one service, one revenue stream or one way of operating is inherently vulnerable. Our work across different sectors helped VIVO survive a period that could easily have ended our story. That experience fundamentally reinforced how I think about resilience today.
Resilience isn’t simply surviving a crisis. It is creating enough options that when one road closes, you have somewhere else to go.
Know What Business You're Really In
Over the years, VIVO was frequently brought into major engagements by much larger firms that had won the overall contract but didn’t necessarily possess every capability required to deliver it. Digital was often one of those capabilities, and we became the company behind the scenes solving that part of the problem.
Those experiences forced me to reconsider how I defined VIVO. Were we an advertising agency? A digital company? A creative firm? A communications company? Yes—and no. At our core, we were problem solvers.
That distinction became increasingly important because companies tend to define themselves by what they sell rather than by the value they create. But services change. Technology changes. Platforms disappear. Customer expectations evolve. Entire categories can be transformed by something that barely existed a few years earlier. AI is accelerating that cycle now.
Organizations that define themselves too narrowly risk protecting a business model while the market moves beyond it. The more important question for leaders is not simply, What do we sell? It is, What are we exceptionally good at solving?
Capability has a much longer shelf life than a service offering.
The strongest organizations understand this. Their value isn’t confined to a particular product or discipline; it lies in their ability to combine intelligence, talent, technology, creativity and execution to solve increasingly complex problems. That is also why transformation cannot simply be a technology initiative.
Leadership Means Knowing When Success Has Expired
Technology can enable transformation, but it cannot lead it. That responsibility still belongs to people.
In my experience, one of the hardest parts of organizational transformation isn’t selecting a new technology, developing a strategic plan or redesigning a customer experience. It’s getting people to release their attachment to an old version of success.
Leaders are particularly susceptible to this because success creates its own evidence. Something worked. We built it. Customers bought it. Revenue grew. Perhaps we were even celebrated for it. Why would we want to change it?
Because what made an organization successful yesterday can become the very thing that prevents it from succeeding tomorrow.
The pace of change makes that increasingly dangerous. AI, automation, new workforce expectations, changing consumer behavior and declining trust in institutions are not waiting for organizations to finish their five-year plans. Leaders have to become comfortable questioning assumptions while the business is still working—not only after something breaks.
That requires humility because we have to acknowledge that what we know may no longer be enough. It also requires courage because sometimes the decision to change will look unnecessary to everyone except the person who can see what’s coming.
The organizations that thrive over the next decade won’t necessarily be the largest or best funded. I believe they will be the ones willing to examine themselves continuously, challenge their own assumptions and move before circumstances make movement unavoidable.
Beginning Again Is a Business Strategy
We tend to celebrate new beginnings when we choose them: launching a company, entering a market, introducing a product or hiring a new leader. We’re considerably less enthusiastic when the new beginning is forced upon us by a lost client, failed strategy, technological disruption, leadership transition, market collapse or business model that simply doesn’t work anymore.
Yet some of the most important transformations begin precisely there.
I’ve learned this in business and in life. Sometimes the road you expected to continue simply ends. You can spend an enormous amount of time asking why it ended, wishing it hadn’t or trying to force your way through a road that no longer exists. Or you can start looking for the next on-ramp.
That idea sits at the heart of a word I’ve used for years: Sopossible.
Sopossible isn’t about believing everything will magically work out. It is the belief that another possibility exists, coupled with the willingness to do the work required to find it.
There is an important business distinction there. Optimism alone isn’t strategy. A vision without execution doesn’t transform an organization. And innovation without the courage to change anything remains an idea. Possibility becomes valuable when we act on it.
The Three Questions Leaders Should Be Asking
For organizations navigating disruption, I believe the conversation can begin with three deceptively simple questions: What must we protect? What must we release? What must we become?
What we protect includes the things fundamental to the organization’s value—its strongest capabilities, relationships, intellectual capital, reputation, institutional knowledge and the parts of its culture worth carrying forward.
What we release is often more difficult. These are the processes, assumptions, structures, products and behaviors that may once have served the organization well but were designed for a world that no longer exists.
Then comes the hardest question: What must we become?
The answer may require capabilities we don’t yet possess, technologies we haven’t adopted, partnerships we haven’t formed, employees with different skills, customers we haven’t met or even a different understanding of the business we’re actually in. But that’s where the future lives.
At VIVO360, Inc. our own evolution has shaped how we approach transformation for our clients. We believe organizations have to understand what is changing around them, determine what those changes mean for the people they serve and then have the intelligence, creativity and courage to act.
The objective isn’t simply to survive disruption. Survival gets you through the moment. Resilience prepares you for what comes after it.
After more than 25 years in business, I’ve learned that longevity isn’t about avoiding the moments that force you to change. No organization can do that.
Longevity is about becoming very good at beginning again.
An Invitation
- A client seeking a partner who understands culture as deeply as strategy
- An institution committed to communicating with integrity
- A nonprofit or university looking for alignment, not performance
- A talented professional who wants to do work with meaning and consequence