Proactive framing

I didn't publish last week because I was struggling with resilience.

Resilience is a funny thing. Merriam-Webster says it's "an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change." But in that definition, there are two ways of looking at it.

When we talk about personal resilience, it's usually in the context of misfortune: how did a person bounce back from trauma, illness, or disaster? How did they rebuild? It's about looking backwards. This kind of resilience, ironically, never feels resilient or brave. It's about doing it scared, getting up every day and putting one foot in front of the other, even when you don't know where the path leads.

But in a business context, it's used in a context that's forward-looking. How can the organization anticipate change and be flexible when the misfortune comes?

These are two sides to the same coin, and right now, a lot of people are doing both. They're helping the organization to build operational resilience with things like:

Establishing robust supply chains that help to ease the pain of tariffs
Building out solar microgrids to ensure uninterrupted power during storms or disasters
Developing sustainable content strategies and designs to ensure that content is accessible on slower, older devices when customers can't afford new
Creating succession plans to ensure stability in the event of layoffs

All of these things are sustainable, in the broadest sense of the word. And I think that we need to start thinking about personal resilience in a similar way. We need to do some forecasting for our own lives and proactively build for an uncertain future, rather than waiting, reacting, and rebuilding.

What are our personal supply chains? Where do we get our food, our fuel, our clothing? Are we eating locally and seasonally, or importing from afar? (Local foods aren't necessarily a climate solution, but it's a philosophy that tends to favor fresher, whole foods.) Are we building systems of disposability or sustainable systems of durability?

How do we ensure uninterrupted access to our friends and family, even when we may be far apart?

What stories are we telling with our content — social media, conference talks, professional portfolios — and how do we make that accessible and appealing? I tend to balk at discussing personal brand stuff, but it can be a good exercise to articulate your wants, needs, and values before you have to.

Are we building strong communities and professional networks to help each other (and ourselves) as the marketplace contracts? You can even build a network through community service.

With this in mind, reach out to me if you want a sounding board on your proactive resilience journey. I'd be happy to help where I can.

"Sustainable businesses are more resilient, setting them up for long-term viability and success."

Alisa Bonsignore
Sustainable Content: How to Measure and Mitigate the Carbon Footprint of Digital Data
Now available

What I've been reading

Simpler is better. People may not be compelled by visuals showing progressively rising temperatures, but do respond to a binary: is it cold enough to freeze the lake this winter, or not?

The U.K. has a plan to outfit nearly all new home construction with solar panels within the next two years.

You'd think that unfettered access to drilling for fossil fuels would be a financial boon for oil companies. You'd be wrong. Apparently the price of fossil fuels will become so cheap that they won't be worth the cost to extract. So that's some unintentionally good news.

Let's face it: everything digital has a cost.

Shameless and unsolicited cross-promotion of good stuff!

Next week, I'll be speaking at Green IO in NYC, in conjunction with the apidays conference. It's a lineup of 200+ speakers, where local technologists, industry leaders, and experts will gather to explore the dynamic intersection of APIs, product management, and AI-enabled engineering. Want to attend? It's not too late to sign up with code IKNOWALISABONSIGNORE.