Last week I wrote about the importance of avoiding binary thinking when your business doesn’t work for you anymore. It’s not “blow it up” or “keep going at all costs.” It’s about getting fine-tuned in spotting the mismatches, so you can adjust what you need to and keep what works.
Once you see the mismatches, though, it’s natural to start imagining what the next version of the business should look like.
A new offer. A different business model. A smaller or larger team. A new role for ourselves. A different way of delivering the work.
But before deciding what the next version should look like, there’s a more fundamental question to answer:
What does the next version of the business need to make possible for the human at the center of it?
It’s easy to skip this question. Given your experience, once you see the mismatches, you quickly see possible solutions. You know how to think about revenue, clients, positioning, delivery, staffing, etc. You could begin rearranging the pieces almost immediately.
But if you start there, your strategic savvy will solve the wrong problem. Here’s why.
We’ve been conditioned to consider everything else first: what the business requires, what clients expect, what the market will support, what seems responsible or practical. Then, somewhere near the end, we ask what we need and try to fit those needs into what’s already been decided.
When your business no longer works for you the way it once did, that old order—strategy first, human needs second—needs to go out the window.
Otherwise, you’ll create new offers but expect yourself to maintain the same impossible pace. You’ll shift your team around but continue to make every decision. You’ll leave one business model for another that requires the same visibility, availability, responsibility, or output that you can’t do or don’t want anymore.
The business could look completely different, but your relationship to it would be exactly the same.
The next version of your business cannot be designed in reaction to what you want to escape. And it cannot be designed by starting with everything outside of yourself and then asking what room is left for you.
You need to start with the question I posed above: What does the next version of the business need to make possible for the human at the center of it?
What pace can you actually sustain? How much responsibility do you want to carry? What work do you want to spend your time doing? How do you want your days to feel? When do you want to work? What does the rest of your life require from you now? What gives you enough room for creativity, energy, and whatever else you need in order to function well?
These aren’t preferences to accommodate after the important business decisions have already been made. They’re the first things to consider.
Only after we understand those requirements does it make sense to bring our strategic ability back in and ask: How can I realign this business around what I need?
Once you know that context, you can ask things like, what offers make sense? How should things be structured? What does the business need to earn? What will the logistics look like? What tradeoffs am I actually willing to make?
Those questions still matter. But we ask them only after we’ve given ourselves ample room to discover—and declare—what we need the business to make possible for us and our lives.
And our answers may be very different from what it was when we originally built the business.
Energy changes. Values shift. Ambitions evolve. Work we once enjoyed may no longer fit, while needs we barely considered before may not be impossible to ignore.
We do not owe lifelong allegiance to decisions made by an earlier version of ourselves under different conditions.
Realignment isn’t finding the smartest new version of the business and then figuring out how to fit yourself inside it. It’s refusing to make yourself the final consideration in a business that is supposed to support you and your life.
Understand what you need. Make those needs part of the design from the beginning. Then use everything you know about business to build from there.
Human first, business strategy second.
I’d love to know if and how you relate to this. Or if anything I’ve written lately sparks questions within you. Fill me in, and I’ll personally respond.
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