There are challenging seasons in the life of every company. Nearly every entrepreneur who has been in business more than 10 years has at least one story about a time when they weren’t sure the company would make it.
When times are difficult, the strategic conversations around the conference table sound like, “We are low on cash. We can do initiative X or Y, or neither, but not both. What should we do? Here are the pros and cons of each. Here are some other random ideas that perhaps we should do instead, etc. etc. etc.”. These conversations can have the general tone of “I’m not really sure what we should be doing… but it’s definitely something… and I’m confident we will figure it out… but because we don’t yet know, we need to think on it some more.”
Even during these uncertain times, remember, this is the job everyone wants. It is the proverbial “seat at the table”. The seat at the table includes the crushing sense of responsibility for the future employment of everyone at the company and the accompanying sickening feeling that you might fail, and also the thrilling idea that you can hatch a strategic plan, map the required tasks, allocate resources, execute that plan and ultimately succeed. This is a highly desirable position – to be able to work out a plan for the company and to see your thoughts come to life over time as the team works to bring the plan to fruition.
This is the strategy part of the job that people crave and climb the corporate ladder to perform. In other words, this is the fun part!
Don’t throw up.
