Whirlpools and Mannequins

Feels like an unusual title this time, doesn’t it? Well, curious times often call for creative thinking and new perspectives. With business and life potentially headed for uncharted waters and many of us not having felt this way before, how does one cope and what can be found.

Whirlpools

You see them just about every day at home. Take a bath and watch the water drain through a tiny whirlpool. Do the dishes and see the water make its winding way down. In the oceans, whirlpools are naturally occurring when there are narrow passages of waters connecting two seas. As the tide moves, whirlpools form and pull water in a circular manner down below. These can get huge, like in the Saltstraumen near the Artic Circle where swirls appear with a radius of over 15 feet, pulling things down the same distance. Though beautiful, whether man-made or naturally occurring, whirlpools can be quite dangerous as lives have been lost to them.

Changing Tides

This complex world has changed in even more unpredictable ways than we could have imagined. We have impacted our ocean tides. In many areas, tides are no longer as constant as the tide tables suggest. Tidal ranges are increasing due to dredging of the ocean floor and other man-made coastal changes. Back on land, unpredictable societal changes have happened too. The range of what to expect has expanded dramatically. Eastern Europe has been invaded. Some may have seen this coming; most of us have experienced shock. Meanwhile, if you live in democratic Canada, you witnessed the implementation of the Emergencies Act - making banks freeze protesters’ accounts without court orders. This was a first for our gentle northern neighbors with the admirable motto “A Mari Usque Ad Mare”, you see. As a result, lives are being spun lower. As these social tides change, there is no immediate escape apparent.

Alternatives For Tomorrow

To get to tomorrow, you must really think. For your business and life, what redundancies do you have in place to ensure your future against the unforeseen? When is the last time you looked around to challenge your assumptions about your alternatives? Simple things like the following: Do you have a second bank account for your business? What about back-up credit cards, computers, and vendors? Are you leveraging ancillary sources for your fundraising? If you aren’t thinking of alternatives for nearly every aspect of your business and life, it would be wise to do so now.

Mannequins

We are most familiar with mannequins as crash-test dummies. They have saved our lives as scientists have strapped sensors on them to see how effective seat-belts and air bags are. They have allowed us to see ourselves. In a strange way, mannequins represent redundancy. Rather than one of us get in the car and experience the consequences of driving into a wall, the mannequin does it for us. Rather than put that shirt on, let’s see how it looks on that stationary body. In short, they are very useful in seeing ourselves.

So useful in fact that a team of scientists once sent a mannequin donned with a life vest into a maelstrom to assess what would happen. It ended up being pulled down to the bottom of the seabed. The lesson: Don’t be a mannequin in a maelstrom. Take actions today to prepare for what is next. The tide is high and the time is now in this very unpredictable whirld.

Here's to you and your awesome future.

Until then, keep your feet on the board and keep riding your wave!

Robert J. Khoury

CEO Agile Rainmakers