Managing Your Business
in Times of
Great Uncertainty
FAQs
While this website is primarily a blogging platform, readers may still have a few questions that cannot be handled adequately within the blog comment machinery and are passed along via contacts
General
Q: This site looks like a work-in-progress – will changes continue indefinitely?
A: Very likely. Most updates however will involve development and focusing of tools and examples.
Q: What is the difference between “users”, “registered users”, and “subscribers”?
A: “Users” are simply anyone who visits the site but does not register or subscribe. These are referred to on some sites as “guests”. WordPress requires users to register or subscribe in order to post comments on blogs. Most blog sites have this requirement. We also require users of our tools to register so that we can save their entries for their future use.
Q: Blogs on this site make very little mention of COVID-19. Why?
A: My personal view is that COVID-19 is just part of the generally chaotic environment of business today rather than being anything that can be addressed by management. For the moment at least, it just is.
Q: Blogs so far seem to view the COVID-19 mess and lockdowns as being part of the ongoing business environment and not as something that will eventually go away. Will it go away in your view?
A: Like almost everyone, I strongly hope that it will soon vanish. But me head and gut says that it will not, at least for some extended period. It is going to evolve, rather quckly in some respects, and it it this evolution that managements today must address daily.
Q: This website seems to focus on “uncertainty” but it clearly addresses issues that go far beyond this. Why?
A: Managing under uncertainty is the focusing mechanism but management itself encompasses a much broader range of concerns. The broader concerns cannot be avoided so far as I can see.
Coaching
Q: Do you offer any phone or video-based (Zoom) coaching services?
A: No I do not. Why? Over my decades of coaching managers, entrepreneurs, and executives, I dealt with stacks of meeting notes based on memory or handwritten notes. So often, these came up subsequently and were challenged as being incomplete or erroneous in terms of what others recalled or noted. Turns out that the challenges were often justified. I have turned to “notes” written by participants (client and coach) in the form of emails (via Slack) that are part of the process itself. Clarification and extension are part of this process.
Q: We don’t use Slack. Is there any other messaging app that you can use?
A: Slack was chosen because of its popularity and ease of use. However, it will be especially easy for clients to use since all of the complexities of setup are handled here. Clients will simply be given a login to the Slack workspace that is already set up.
Q: How is coaching priced and billed?
A: We presently charge each client a flat $1,000 per month, with no limits on the number of client-coach interactions each month. The first month is free and there is no obligation to continue. Billing and payment are handled electronically through the Strip Payments service.
Q: Can you coach a small (e.g. two) team?/span>
A: A definite probably. This should work if the team, preferably not more than two, if fact operates as a team and not as two relatively independent executives. In the latter case, the process really has to be set up for two clients separately.
Q: How long does a typical coaching engagement last?/span>
A: I’d say roughly six months, although I have had clients keep me on board for years. I a few cases, what the client was looking for got handled within a few weeks.
Tool & Examples
Q: What are some alternatives to scenario-based planning as you outline?
A: I have done a great deal of research on top of my many years of practicing planning but have not run across anything that is both simple and near-term focused. Things are moving too quickly and unpredictably to use any of the primary approaches from the past (i.e., pre-2020).
Q: When will you have the tools available for our use?
A: To quote a very popular response – soon. Turned out that the mechanics involved are a bit more complex than I had hoped. A kind of mini-app.