Living with purpose & peril - is now the time to be aggressive, defensive or both?

Spending more time at home recently has helped me get to know my neighbors better. Turns out, I’ve a very friendly Chipmunk and a pretty reclusive mouse that live by my study window, and in my firepit respectively.

I’ve nick named them Purpose and Peril – as the Chipmunk is so purposeful all day as she digs holes in the garden, and the mouse, well he seems like an adrenaline junky trading ready made home for inherent risk!

Reflecting on their different missions and choices this morning, and thinking about the world working to accelerate or ice plans, restructure, simplify, shore up talent and find new efficiencies makes me realize some undoubtedly great decisions will be made, and possibly some not so great ones too in the coming months.

Which is why I think my two neighbors could be so much inspiration for any of us, making choices right now.

On the one hand, the chipmunk is great at looking at building and strengthening its burrow and making sure it’s going to be a great nest for a while. On the other, my mouse seems to not be too concerned about the lack of security or longevity of his home. It quite literally could go up in smoke at any moment.

So, if you’re looking at your future plans, and determining just how aggressive, defensive or a mixture of both you need to be right now – if you ask my neighbors when they were building their burrow, it probably came down to these four questions:

·      How big is the opportunity for growth you have? 

·      How complicated will it be to build/deliver?

·      How volatile an environment will it be? 

·      How sustainable over time is it likely to be? 

If you can get some simple data points on the above, I reckon there’s the makings of a 'compass' to help guide the degrees of purpose and peril for the key decisions that now need to be made.