Risk or Gamble?

Life is what happens to you,

While you're making other plans

This is the line everyone (should) know from John Lennon's 'Beautiful Boy' but the line right before is what we need to think about because it's directly about risk —

Before you cross the street,

Take my hand

We know risks are out there and bad things can happen to any of us on any single day...any time we leave the house we are exposed to risk. Actually, even before you leave your home you're at risk.

Life is full of risk but living, and especially the ability to make a living, should never be a gamble. What employees need in order to come back to work is honesty and clarity from their leadership - unfortunately, according to this BusinessWeek report:

“In the past few months, U.S. businesses have been on a silencing spree. Hundreds of U.S. employers across a wide range of industries have told workers not to share information about Covid-19 cases or even raise concerns about the virus, or have retaliated against workers for doing those things, according to workplace complaints filed with the NLRB and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).”

Businesses that can't be relied on by their most important component will have no people to rely on as soon as another opportunity opens up for them. They'll be out the door in a heartbeat. How are businesses not seeing that as a huge risk? If this is what businesses plan on doing, it's all Fyre festival all the time, from the top down.

You can't control everything but failing to plan is planning to fail.

We all need to read this and rethink risk, especially with schools opening up: it's not all or nothing and whatever we each do to mitigate risk helps.

Each decision we make to reduce risk helps. Each time we wear a mask, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we socialize outside instead of inside, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we stay six feet away instead of sitting closer together, we’re throwing some safety on the pile. Each time we wash our hands, eat apart and don’t spend time in large gatherings of people, we’re adding to the pile.

And that applies to everything, not just these Covid dominated times. Whatever we can do to stay safe, happy, healthy, knowledgeable, skilled...it all adds up. And shouldn't that type of asset accumulation be the goal for each and every one of us.

Every week has some awesome startup and business related pieces of content out there. Here are a few, please add more in the comments or send to me...I love it:

I just love the design of this graphic from Visual Capitalist.

Events and networking! Huge importance for all businesses, it's why you and I are on LinkedIn in the first place. Obviously, that has taken a huge hit and we've lost that touch point with the broader world. There are groups putting together virtual events that I'm looking forward to in the next weeks:

• This looks awesome! Learn How To Grow Your LinkedIn Presence Organically - not sure what the Purple world is either but we'll find out September 15th
• New York City's 1 Million Cups (I am an organizer) is getting together (over zoom) on Wednesday, September 16th at 8:30 - please attend and if you'd like to present, let me know.

Enjoy your holiday weekend...

Before you go to sleep,

Say a little prayer,

Every day,

In every way,

It's getting better and better,