Strategic Questions for Uncertain Times
Plus, some updates, including my Sabbatical
First, Some Updates
A Sabbatical
I am embarking on my first sabbatical in December and January: I’ll be off work completely for 6 weeks, spending most of that time in India, where I lived for a swath of my twenties. Yes, this is a big deal! I love my job, and am approaching this time off with great curiosity for what will happen to my brain when it’s truly been allowed to shelve “business stuff” for an extended stretch.
What I can say is it’s been a whole project to plan, but also weirdly easy. I have a phenomenal team that’ll be holding down the fort while I’m out. John and I are going to talk a bit about my plans in our last Whiskey Fridays episode of the season, that’ll be out in early December.
The Radical Business Owner’s Guide to Profit V1 came out at the end of September. I had intended to follow up with Volume 2 in October and Volume 3 in November.
That…has not happened. I had a choice to really push and grind to meet those self-created deadline, but of course that would be misaligned to the project and my values! Both V2 & V3 are coming right along, and will be out before I head on Sabbatical.
Whiskey Fridays Podcast latest episodes:
Just out: Building a Reparative & Anti-Racist Economy with Jessica Norwood.
Also: a primer on the different types of investor relationships. A pair about making money: navigating capitalist critical values while making money with Bear Hebert, and frameworks for paying yourself.
From the archives for these times: Building worlds of interdependence and care with Sarah Ryhanen and Grief as a Portal with Sebene Selassi and Jennye Patterson
Strategic Questions for Uncertain Times
In smallbusinessland, we’re in the season of turning our attentions to next year, as we always do, but amidst a vortex of uncertainty that for many feels bigger, scarier than ever. As I’ve sat with clients the past couple of weeks, we’ve shared a lot of fear and worry together; a lot of questions about what next year might hold.
I’ve gathered this list of questions from conversations with clients and others on what we might consider moving forward. Some of these are very very pragmatic, others more expansive. We learned a lot about fast-moving, mass uncertainty in 2020, and I hope we collectively still hold muscle memory from that time, at least from flexing into mutual aid and solidarity.
If you have a team or partners, you’re responsible for other’s livelihoods in some way, and that’s worth taking seriously (as I know you already do). At the same time, businesses do have the ability to model and create meaningful change. And I don’t just mean as individual businesses — the solidarity economy and worker-cooperative movement are movements comprised of many individuals and enterprises.
Resiliency in business flows from a few things: Adequate reserves, a work culture built on trust and belonging, resourced leaders, a connection to a wider ecosystem. I don’t think everything will be fine, but I also hold hope for what we can build, what seeds we can plant, and what new worlds we can practice.
A few principles
1— Support Proceeds Movement:1 grounded, resourced leaders make better quality decisions. If you have a team, you owe it to them to take your own care very, very seriously.
2— Aim for good-enough decisions, made quickly. Limbo is one of the more damaging and depleting states you could hang out in, so do your best to not hang there more than you have to. We’ll never have all the information, you will adapt and update as you know more: so keep moving.
3— Leverage uncertainty for rigorous alignment: economic and societal shakeups can sometimes shift ground in a way that opens up possibility. In other words, crisis can open up space for experiments, personal projects, and leaning into work that previously may have felt too risky / scary / weird, etc...
Similarly, remember how there was a wave of closures, contractions, shake-ups around 2021/2022? I once predicted that many would come out the other side of the pandemic shutdown with smaller, more intimate businesses. It’s not uncommon for folks to look up one day and suddenly find themselves very far from the work that they signed up for, and if that’s you, know that a business that doesn’t support and serve your own goals, doesn’t truly serve your team or your clients and customers either. Sometimes it takes upheaval to contend with decisions that feel impossible during normal times (whatever that means).
Some questions for all times, but especially uncertain times
Upheaval doesn’t impact all parts of the economy equally: Some businesses do okay in uncertain times, others not so much (in the depths of the pandemic, interior designers had some of their best years yet; concert venues, yikes.) How is your business positioned for economic upheaval?
If you make things, how could tariffs or supply chain upheaval impact your business?
How can you be responsible with serving your people with fewer resources? Maybe your customers/clients will still show up, but will they show up with fewer resources.
Do you have adequate financial reserves? (2-3 months of operating expenses is ideal. If you’re really freaked out, you could extend that, but you’re likely jamming up the business with anxiety-driven reserve levels. On the other hand, please don’t deplete your cash at the end of the year just to avoid some taxes.)
Some of your people are and will be very scared, other folks will carry on as they had before. How can you as a leader tend to both?
What kinds of extra funds or resources could your business provide for it’s people? ( an emergency healthcare or childcare fund? Sabbaticals or PTO for organizing or mutual aid work? )
Do any of your policies, benefits, or resources need updating to best support your team’s mental health and resilience?
How might climate change impact your business directly or indirectly? (e.g. extreme weather events, rising sea levels, energy costs, supply chain disruption)
Who are you accountable to? (yourself, clients/customers, employees, wider community)
What parts of your business are not working for you right now? What difficult decisions are you avoiding related to those parts?
What ecosystem does your business exist within? Who are your co-conspirators and collaborators in resilience and world building?
I’m pretty sure this is an idea that I can credit to Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, the founder of Body-Mind Centering.