On worry and inaction

Jeremy Kloubec, a former colleague of mine now with consulting organization Infosys, writes recently about the dire unrealized predictions facing the VC community just a year ago. He details the shifts in the industry and partially credits the architects of the still-nascent recovery programs.

His comments reminded me of something my mother often said: "95% of things you worry about never come to pass."

Of course, its that 5% that keep us up at night.

As it pertains to our business life, if, as Peter Drucker is credited with stating, "the best way to predict the future is to create it", then 100% of our angst can be squeezed to 5% insignificance by the simple act of doing. Dire warnings and worry generally come with the same highly unlikely assumption: "If things do not change, ..." That peculiar assumption ignores the fact that humans - particularly capitalist humans - are not given to inaction. Even our base 'fight or flight' instinct indicates an action of one type or another. Change is inevitable.

And so it is with this crisis. We're not out of it, not by a long shot, and our myriad collective and individual actions will differ in effectiveness and certainly create new crises even as they create new solutions. But our reactions to events and the actions we take are all we've got and will continue to alter the linear path.

If history is any guide, that's more than enough.

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