Embrace Ambiguity

• A world crisis.
• An invisible enemy.
• Economic collapse.
• Normal obliterated.
• Status quo shattered.
• The future murky.

 

That’s pretty daunting, no? More than two months in we are all getting restless and ready to get to work. Assuming, that is, if you’re not one of those businesses or workers on the front lines holding it together with nary a day off.

Many write about how this is a great opportunity to rebuild and reset expectations for what life and business could be. It’s a huge moment we can seize to make change happen. But how? What can you do? You’ve been handed a once-in-a-lifetime forced prompt to reinvent yourself and your business. You don’t want to blow it, right?

Yet, maybe you’re stuck. Maybe you’re still thinking about how things used to be and how you used to operate your business. Maybe you haven’t made the shift to the new. Maybe the unknown has you paralyzed. How will you know you’ve chosen wisely?

You, my dear friend, have a big free helping of ambiguity. We all do. Get used to it. Learn to love it. Because once you do, the path forward won’t seem so daunting. The weight of indecision becomes greater than the weight of choosing.

 

Start with what you know for certain:

• Systems we took for granted failed.
• Everything is connected.
• This won’t be the last pandemic.
• We still have a major climate crisis bearing down upon us.
• You built a business before.
• You built a career before.
• You have resilience.

 

And of course, the future is ambiguous.

With that, think about the change you can make in your business, your community, your people. Think about how your business is connected and can create stronger connections and thus bring value to the customers you serve. Think about how you do and can make their lives better. Think about how you can find the abundance and bring it to the scarcity. That’s where the opportunity lies.

Recognize, too, that what is true today may not be true tomorrow. There’s no room for complacency. Hopefully you’ve realized there wasn’t room for complacency before the pandemic either. And that while you may have been cruising comfortably along before, that it was a false comfort. That our most cherished systems were not as strong as we thought they were. Many of us did. Don’t beat yourself up about that. Just acknowledge it. Embrace what you’ve got now and do the work.