L shaped recession – flowingmotion

Yesterday, I was talking to a young man who apologized for his loss of confidence. He has had the spectacular privilege of being shipwrecked not once, but twice, in the grand drama of the 2008 financial crisis in the UK.

“Of course your confidence has been knocked”, I replied. “But you’ve lost confidence in the world rather than yourself. You just don’t get that yet.”

The earth is moving under our feet and I am seasick

The first time I went on a cross-Channel ferry, I found myself suddenly feeling immensely ill, almost as if I had woken up in the middle of the night with food poisoning. I was wide awake though. I sat down abruptly, quite alarmed by the sensation of being critically ill. Fortunately, my companions were experienced sailors and they realized the cause of my distress. “We’re moving”, they said, very gently. I would have worked it out eventually, but their kind words saved me from several minutes of worrying and the magnification of my physical discomfort.

I still get seasick, though I pride myself on my ability to puke neatly, to lie down quietly, and to take the discomfort without disturbing the rest of the party. Yachting in the Caribbean last year, I resolved this has simply got to stop. If I want to go on boats, and enjoy swimming in a warm sea, I have to learn to cope with ‘the earth moving under my feet’.

The unknown and the unknowable

I would rather not be made redundant of course, and I would rather this had not happened to my young friend and many of his friends. But it will happen. To many of us.

We have no way of knowing how long the recession will last. This recession fits into the category of unknowable rather than unknown. I learn all about it that I can. I am collecting good explanations on the page Financial Crisis Visually.

But it is not knowable. Not even the experts know what is happening, or how long it will last.

So how do I cope with this ‘unknowableness’ and the equivalent feeling of being very seasick?

I need to plan for the very short term and keep lots in reserve.

What can I get done right now, today?
What are the wide range of choices of things I might do tomorrow?

If I can keep those two in balance, I’ll do OK.

A practical plan

Practically-speaking:

I need to spend some time every evening going over what I achieved each day, and adding it to my resume.
I need to be on top of my finances, to the last penny, and know exactly what I’ve spent and what I owe. I also need to collect what is owing to me, promptly.
Then I need to list all my opportunities in a file or a loose leaf binder.
My fourth evening task is to pick out what I must do and will finish on the morrow. I want achievements in-hand and on my resume.
Lastly, I leave plenty of time for the unusual and the unexpected. About 80%. That’s what’s needed in uncertain times.

It’s OK for me

Yes, I know. When we are facing a crisis, all of this feels like busy work. We just want it done. We want it over. Look at my posts from yesterday and last week. I was in a blue funk myself.

But if you are in a ship wreck, the last thing you do is start swimming madly hoping to chance on another boat. You must get clear of the boat that is sinking, but it’s best to get in a lifeboat with as much food, water and safety equipment that you can.

You can bring the sense of panic, or sea-sickness, down by sitting down every evening and doing the exercise I listed.

And if you miss a night, don’t beat yourself up. This is not a religious ritual. It is a process which helps you get the results you want. Get back to it the next day.

And let’s do it together

Let me know how to improve the advice. When all is said and done, we are in the same boat, on stormy seas.

Plan for the near term, finish today what can be done today, put it on your resume, and keep lots in reserve.

See you on the beach!

UPDATE: For an HR Managers perspective on the Recession, I have written a summary on a new post.

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A tumultuous year ends

So we come to December 31st, the arbitrary marker of one year ending and another beginning. What a rough road the year has been. The emperor’s clothes of the financial system has shocked us, as has our previous collective unwillingness to call what we all knew. The generational baton has passed from Baby Boomers to Gen X with the gripping election of Barack Obama. In other parts of the world, change has happened, and sometimes of equal significance, change has not happened. It seems that where ever we live, we have reached a fork in the road, and we are unclear about what lies ahead or how to commit our energy.

Anxiety competing with optimism

So as we approach 2009, we have a nasty knawing feeling in our stomachs. If I commit myself to optimism, we think privately, will pessimism turn out to be the better route? Or, vice versa?

Together into the unknown

The reality is that this is a false dilemma and a false choice. We don’t know what is on the road ahead and whether it is to be feared or not. We don’t know if the roads will fork again, or even if the forks we see will rejoin themselves shortly.

All we can really do, is gather ourselves up, surround ourselves with people we like, and set off with a spring in our step.

What we need on the journey along an unknown road

to stick together, to remain within sight and sound of each other
to keep our resources safe and focus on navigating the road
to keep spirits up, lest we drift to that emotional place of bargaining with choices that aren’t real.

In organizations we know

For some of us, the journey ahead may not be quite so obviously into the unknownn. We may be in a viable business that we own, or that employs us. For you, I am happy to say, the most popular post on this blog on the last day of 2008, is one I wrote when the recession seemed likely: a positive approach to HR in the recession.

I made three very similar points back in July about the role of the Human Resources team during recession.

Our own health. Our first priority is to ensure that the HR team has plenty of emotional R&R (rest & recreation). Emotions are contagious and if we have low grade depression, we in HR will spread our low spirits like a forest fire!
Positive goals all round. Our overiding programme is to help each and every person in the organization develop explicit & positive goals and we stop, only, when everyone is brimming with enthusiasm for the year ahead.
Healthy leaders. The chief item in our contingency budget is a lot of time to nurture the emotional health of the leaders. If they are not in good shape, they will be not detect opportunities and we are all sunk.

If you aren’t in HR, or don’t have an HR department, you may want to delegate one person to take charge of this brief.

Into a year of the unknown

For those of us facing the unknown, maybe our businesses are new or our careers are unstable, our work follows the same parallels.

We shape the collective. In hard times, we may be very tempted to go it alone. And I include here whining about other people not helping us sufficiently. If we imagine ourselves walking along a road, as confused as everyone else around us, this is the time to talk to others. This is the time to take care to include everyone we meet. This is the time to take time, and to spend precious resources, on little rituals that celebrate the commonness of our journey, our guts, our gumption, our hope, and that we are on the road together. We may be very reluctant to do this because budgets are tight and we feel resources are limited but this is the time. This is the time to be clear about the collective in our own minds, and through our clarity, help others keep the wellbeing of us all in the front of their minds too. I can make you this promise. The half-an-hour you spend today quietly thinking about who is around you on your journey into 2009 will bring you unparalleled dividends in the year ahead.

We cherish individualism. With the need to protect the collective, we might become overly demanding and even whiny about the responsibilities of others. The collective depends not on what individuals give to it, but what it gives to individuals. To be effective, a collective celebrates the strengths of its members, and makes room for people to have quiet time alone and with intimates to recover their breath and keep their own dreams alive. How much empathy do we have for others around us? Do we understand the shoes in which they walk? Importantly, are we leaving enough time in our day and our transactions to stop and listen and think and understand the people around us? How could we make a quiet half-an-hour each day to slow down and cherish the people around us?

We trade tasks and lessen the burden. A burden shared is more than halved. There can be a temptation to go it alone on the one hand, or to try to use people to do our work on the other and to become demanding and bossy. Organizing is a little different. We identify tasks that are important to the collective and we make sure everyone has a real and respected role to protect the well-being of the group. To extend the metaphor of an unknown road, we put the good map readers onto to reading the map, we put the active and restless to scouting ahead, we put the cooks on to cooking, and the story tellers onto entertainment. Can we make time, once a week or once a month, to stop and think about what must be done, who is the natural person to do it, and what we will do for them while they are doing that for us?

And when it seems hopeless or too hard

And so what if we are new to a place, or in an unpleasant place, with no collective spirit and evil leadership? I know this is hard. I am a pseudo-refugee after all. My advice is to take it step-by-step.

Think through what you need to go down the road, and understand that everyone else needs exactly what you need.
Talk to each person you meet and understand their journey.
Once you understand their strengths, ask them to trade with you what they do well and easily, with what you can do for them.
Set up the time when you will swap.
And continue adding people, all the time keeping the ‘swapping time’ positive, when you also celebrate collective well-being.

Lighten your personal burden for navigating 2009, as and when the opportunity arises, and through your needs, come to celebrate the journeys and strengths of others.

2009: A year of leadership?

In western ritual, we don’t have a year of this or that. Maybe this is the year of leadership?

In years like this, as we walk along an unknown road, we need leaders

who think through what needs to be done
who have the emotional energy to understand and celebrate the journeys that other people are taking
who form the collective as an umbrella
who delegate tasks to protect the collective
who keep commitment to the collective with a vibrant emotional space where we come to recharge rather than be depleted.

I’ll be interested in your stories as the year unfolds. Here’s to a fun, happy and unexpectedly prosperous 2009!