Quick note: I’m going to lay out the scenarios before you here, and I’ll share as much as I can here about how to respond to them. If you need more help, I’ll share how to get that as well. And tomorrow I’ll be hosting a livestream called Signals & Aftershocks to discuss the path ahead and answer your questions in real time. Register now to get into the discussion with us.
The markets dipped yesterday, perhaps in anticipation of this week's jobs numbers. Nothing dramatic—just the kind of wobble that gets everyone checking their phones a little more frequently. But here's what's interesting: it doesn't feel like collapse. It's starting to feel normal.
That's what makes this moment dangerous.
We've been talking about compression for months—the sense that the economy isn't rebounding so much as holding its breath. The job market looks stable on the surface: unemployment at 4.1%, companies still posting openings, wages holding steady. But underneath, something fundamental has shifted. Job openings fell to 7.67 million in July, the lowest since January 2021, missing every economist's estimate. The 2:1 ratio of available positions to job seekers that defined 2022 has now dropped to nearly even.
This isn't the pause before everything bounces back. This is what compression actually looks like.
If you're running a company right now, you have a choice to make. Not next quarter, not when the data gets clearer, but now. What comes next depends entirely on how you answer one question: What's your plan if nothing bounces back?
Five ways this could go
There are essentially five paths forward from here, each with its own emotional signature and tactical fingerprint. You're already on one of them, whether you realize it or not.
Path One: Adapt Early The companies taking this route aren't waiting for permission. They're running weekly "What Changed?" meetings instead of quarterly planning sessions. They're moving budget from marketing spend to experimentation. They're giving teams permission to kill projects mid-stream when the assumptions shift.
In our decentralization pilots, we've seen this approach generate high levels of innovation, elevated engagement, and more founder cycles available for big-picture thinking. The emotional signature here is positive determination—not panic, but the kind of focused energy that comes from accepting reality and getting to work on what's next.
Path Two: Delay Adaptation "We're monitoring the situation" becomes the most common phrase in leadership meetings. Planning cycles get extended. All new hires are contractors. Innovation budgets get "temporarily" frozen while everyone waits to see what Q1 looks like.
This path buys time, but it's expensive time. The emotional signature is stress layered with regret—the growing awareness that the window for easy adaptation is closing while you watch.
Path Three: Double Down Some companies are betting that fundamentals still matter most. They're justifying hiring freezes as "getting back to basics." Their strategy documents still reference 2022 growth targets. Leadership has stopped attending industry events because they're "a waste of time."
The emotional signature here is denial with a side of defensive digging in. It feels like control, at least until it doesn't.
Path Four: False Dawn This might be the most seductive path—the belief that one good quarter means the old rules are back. Investors relax. Founders exhale. Companies over-hire again. But nothing foundational has changed, and the real wave hits after false hope is already baked into every decision.
The emotional signature is relief followed by whiplash. It's the organizational equivalent of taking off your winter coat in February because you had one warm day.
Path Five: Stay the Same Continue running the same OKRs, the same executive meetings, the same quarterly planning cycles as if the world described in The Last Normal Year and The End of the Dependence Contract were just interesting thought experiments rather than the terrain you're actually navigating.
This path offers the payoff of feeling in control. The captain of the Titanic probably felt in control too, right up until he didn't.
Why your strategic plan is probably wrong
Strategic planning assumes you can predict what comes next. But when job openings can fall by 237,000 in a single month and miss every economist's forecast, prediction matters less than pattern recognition.
Companies are now managing month to month, not year to year, but most are still pretending otherwise. They're running planning processes designed for a world of gradual change in an environment that demands rapid sensing and response.
Rod Collins puts it this way: in complex environments, strategy must emerge from action, not precede it. Strategic planning is a remnant of the industrial era, based on the illusion that we can predict and control what comes next.
The companies still winning in this environment have something in common: they sense faster than they plan.
Companies that are already figuring it out
The good news is that organizational adaptation isn't theoretical. It's already happening, quietly outperforming brittle organizations with slower reflexes.
Rabobank adopted dynamic roles and distributed authority, seeing improved adaptability in local markets. Queensland University of Technology piloted adaptive organizational design in a bureaucratic environment, leading to faster cross-team innovation. Procter & Gamble shifted to team-based decision-making structures and saw increases in creativity and responsiveness.
From universities to legacy banks, the shift to adaptive structure isn't experimental anymore. It's proven.
The regenerative business movement offers another model. Patagonia pays farmers to convert to regenerative agriculture, viewing long-term investment as more important than short-term returns. Civic Works in Baltimore builds regenerative food systems while creating youth employment programs. Guayaki Yerba Mate includes ecosystem restoration and cultural revitalization in their business model.
These aren't slower business models—they're more complete ones. They build future capacity while meeting present needs. When the old extractive models hit their limits, this starts looking less like a nice-to-have and more like basic business sense.
The math of adaptation
Let's be clear about the stakes here. If you prepare for compression and it doesn't happen, you end up with more adaptive systems, stronger sensing capabilities, and deeper relationships with the people who matter most to your business. The downside is minimal.
If you don't prepare for compression and it does happen, you face suddenly eroding market share, difficulty attracting and retaining talent, higher customer acquisition costs, dependence on rigid supply chains, and forfeiting power to providers who saw this coming before you did.
The asymmetry is stark: adaptation has limited downside and unlimited upside, while inaction has limited upside and potentially catastrophic downside.
Does your plan depend on magic?
Your plan doesn't require you to predict the future perfectly. But it does require you to be honest about what your current approach assumes. If your plan depends on:
Return to 2021 funding cycles
Centralized control maintaining stability
A hiring spree in Q1
The same OKRs still mattering next year
Then you don't have a plan. You have a wish.
The different questions
The shift from planning to sensing starts with different questions. Instead of "What's our five-year strategy?" try "What did we learn this week that doesn't fit our assumptions?" Instead of "How do we scale this?" ask "What's the smallest irreversible experiment we could run this quarter?"
Instead of "How do we get back to normal?" consider "What would we build if we knew normal wasn't coming back?"
Because what the recent data shows is this: more companies are cutting jobs than creating them. The labor market isn't stagnant—it's actively contracting. This doesn't look like a market poised to create jobs. It looks like a market learning to do more with less.
The future likely involves more independent work, fractional arrangements, and inter-organizational sharing. More human-to-human connection as AI handles the cognitive routine. More regenerative approaches as the old extractive models hit their limits.
That future can be far brighter than what we're leaving behind. I’m a raging optimist about that. But only if we stop planning for the world that's fading and start sensing into the world that's emerging.
So what happens if nothing changes?
This period of uncertainty is where my coaching and our decentralization pilots at Jumpsuit have a way forward. We’re in the waters with you, finding pent-up energy and channeling it toward innovation, inclusive leadership, and decisive action.
One option for getting started is our half-day Emergent Strategy Immersion, where you’ll get new tools to layer onto your present business to begin growing your adaptive capacity. Just hit reply if you’d like to learn more.