After The Crash, Your Glory.

Imagine you had a crystal ball.

Look at it all shiny and sparkly.

Life is good. Sales are up. Opportunities are rich.

But look a little deeper. What do you see? A little less shiny, a less rosy perhaps?

Imagine it looks like one in seven of your neighbours losing their jobs. Or hundreds of thousands of businesses going bust. From Lisbon to Los Angeles, San Francisco to Salford, organisations toppling.

This is what the crystal ball would have looked like if we peered in sometime in 2007.

And now?

We don’t like to believe or imagine that shocks, or meltdowns, will happen. In fact, we actively ignore them. The fear shakes our nervous systems. Nicholas Taleb calls them Black Swans. But come they will.

Almost everyone agrees a major recession is coming. It’s question of when.

I was at a talk recently at Cambridge University and they spoke about the impending crash. I had coffee with a friend just yesterday and he spoke about it too. Something is in the air.

Things like financial bubbles. Stock markets rise higher and higher yet what we earn, what we see, feel and see, remain stagnant. This feeds an imbalance. We grow shaky. Unsure. We feel the insecurity in our bones. We know a crash is coming. Maybe more.

There is huge stretch in the system. The balloon is pumped. The feeling of imbalance is real. And when nature is unbalanced, she corrects.

And when she does, what will you do?

Maybe the coming crash will wash away the old ideas, the prevailing thoughts and approaches of the last 100+ years? Maybe companies oriented and built to maximise profit above all else will die, drowned by their own petards, if such a thing is possible.

And as the old is washed away, the old ideas, the old relics, the old institutions, what might find its place? Ideas which currently exist on the periphery perhaps? Like new ownership models, or new working rhythms, or activist companies, relentlessly, religiously working in pursuit of a braoder gain and different impact.

The shakedown is coming.

In the last recession, over 200,000 businesses went bust. One in seven of your neighbours lost their jobs.

And the signals suggest the crunch this time will be tighter and more intense. That the fall out due last time - but arrested by a colossal bail out you paid for (but they didn’t…) - will this time run its course.

You have a choice.

Let the wave come and hope for the best.

Or shift now. Be ready. Orientate to tomorrow’s most successful and resilient version of yourself; a version conditioned to succeed, even as the world around you crumbles and is redrawn.

What does this look like?

There is much talk of Purpose. Some companies are genuinely motivated by it. Most do no more than wrap in the fig leaf of its convenience.

A purpose gives direction. It’s not wallpaper or words for the HQ walls. Purpose is resilience. It lends clear direction and orientation. It’s what we bounce back to when the shit hits the fan. It’s the magnet which pulls us forward. But it needs to be real. Not made up. You know the difference.

Businesses succeeding post crash will be genuinely oriented around a purpose.

Whilst the landscape will look different post crash, commercial fundamentals will of course still apply. You can’t spend more than you generate and your best bet is to keep your prices high. Discount and sell more is fools logic. Charge more and, if need be, sell less. To charge more you need to know your customers well, serve them well, be valuable and useful. If your purpose is genuinely aligned to their needs you’re on the right track. Charge more.

Big lumbering is dead. Small, adaptable, autonomous teams talk to our better nature - we like them more and do better work in them. This is true today. It will be true for business and organisations in the brave new, post crash world.

Organise around small, adaptable, resilient pods; teams which self organise, which make their own calls, which are connected to the people they serve. These will lend you and your organisation adaptability.

The crash is coming.

You can sit and wait and hope for the best. Most of you will, in fact.

The rest of you will organise to a more resident, successful version of your better selves.

You’ll work on purpose.

You’ll change more, not less.

You’ll work in small, adaptable, fluid teams.

Recessions - or Depressions? - shake out the fat, the dead wood. A natural recycling of the waste. Leave your ability to respond until the test comes and you risk responding too late.