Small and medium business owners are facing a perfect storm of pressure. On top of the burden of daily operations, they’ve been rocked by several seismic forces at once: geopolitical instability, rising costs, the advent of AI and dramatic workforce shifts. It’s created a web of complexity few owner-operators will have encountered before.
Navigating this uncertainty is hard enough for large organisations backed by dedicated strategy teams. For SME owners, often acting alone and with limited resources, the strain can feel paralysing.
Through her business Power Projects, leadership consultant Chris Power has spent years advising leaders on how to respond to moments she calls ‘inflection points.’ In a recent white paper, Inflection Leadership, Power argues the current environment demands a specific kind of leadership from SME owners: less doing, more seeing. While the prospect may be daunting, she says smaller businesses have something big businesses do not: agility. “You can turn a small business around,” she says. “It’s an easier ship to turn around, whereas some of the big corporates that I work with, it takes a lot to shift.”
By viewing upheaval through a lens of opportunity rather than risk, Power says SMEs can not only withstand a storm but grow from it.
The Perfect Storm Building Around SME Owners
An inflection point in Power’s framework is a moment when significant change occurs, or may occur, inside or outside a business. Covid-19 and its subsequent lockdowns remain the most vivid recent example, but Power warns that what is unfolding now is broader and arguably more consequential.
“It feels like this is the biggest shift,” she says. “Covid was one thing, but now, geopolitically, we’re at a major inflection point.” Power cites a long list of contributing factors. Rising fuel and supply chain costs caused by the Middle East conflict. Cost-of-living increases that reduce discretionary spending. The demographic impact of an ageing population. Plus, the rapid emergence of AI. “It can mean that new players are coming into the market, because now they can without all the legacy buildings and systems and processes and so on,” she explains.
The absence of a financial buffer makes each of these shifts harder for an SME to handle than a bigger business, and prompts questions about how long they can hold off passing on costs in an ecosystem that is already tight.
Power says during tough times, the businesses that do best are those that look beyond survival. She gives the example of the pandemic, when some hunkered down, took their JobKeeper payments and waited for life to return to normal. But others used the disruption to reshape their structure, their client base and their goals.
Inflection points can also arise internally. “Inflection points aren’t necessarily negative,” Power points out. “They can be because you’ve just won three big contracts, and suddenly your workforce has to shift, or your capability to produce has to shift. There’s great opportunity, if you know where to look.”
Get on the Balcony For Context And Insights
Finding time to ‘look’ is central to Power’s advice for optimising inflection points. Her message to SME owners is deceptively straightforward: step back far enough to actually see what is happening.
“I talk about getting up on the balcony. Are you on the balcony? Can you actually see what’s happening?” she asks. It’s a nightclub metaphor drawn from two Harvard professors who argue leaders can’t appreciate what’s going on on the dancefloor until they view the bigger picture from a higher perspective, on the balcony. Power says most SME owners know they should be working on the business rather than in it, but daily demands mean they fall into a busyness trap.
“People are really busy, and everyone’s flat out,” she acknowledges. “When you’re really flat out, you’re just in ‘the doing,’ and it’s really hard to pull oneself out and stand up and go, ‘What’s going on here?’”
She urges owners to reflect and be clear on what their role actually requires as opposed to what feels comfortable: are they doing what their staff needs or are they falling back on to tasks that make them feel busy and in control but could be done by someone else.
“You’ve got to consciously say, ‘What’s required of me now, as the leader of this business? What have I got to find out? How do I keep ahead of the game and notice what’s happening?” she says.
Once leaders carve out this space on the balcony, Power says they finally have the capacity to do the high-value strategic thinking that ensures their current priorities match the external environment. Then they can spot hidden opportunities to expand or pivot, and chart a clear path forward.
Employees Are Watching And They Want Hope
Power says employees also consider the balcony-dancefloor gap important. They want to know their employer is considering the bigger picture and has a plan for the future.
She points to data from a Gallup survey which found hope has overtaken trust as the leadership trait employees most need. Hope sits at 56 per cent compared to trust at 33 per cent, a reversal of a long-standing pattern.
“I think it’s a combination of hope and optimism, and it’s connecting with a deeper sense of purpose,” she says. “I think people want to know they’re contributing to something that’s worthwhile and while we as leaders may not have it all sorted, there’s a pathway ahead.”
That finding carries particular relevance in small businesses, where the distance between leaders and teams is small. Employees in a business of 10 or 50 people can see clearly where their boss’s focus lies. “What they’re worried about is the business owners who have just got their heads down, hoping this too shall pass, because life as we know it is shifting. We’re not going backwards.”
Power says an optimistic mindset can also help ward off workplace anxiety. “I hate to use the word resilience, because I think it’s really overused and it can feel a bit dismissive,” she explains. “But it is helpful to think, ‘Oh, a change is coming and I don’t have to be fearful of it.’” Gallup research consistently links hope and employee engagement, with engaged employees delivering significantly higher productivity and lower turnover – both critical for successful SMEs.
Three Ways to Start Thinking Strategically
Power’s practical advice for time-poor SME owners begins with delegation, not as a luxury but as a leadership act. She recommends leaders review their daily activities: “Am I jumping in and doing stuff that is not mine to do? Are there others around me who could be doing those tasks or having that level of accountability to deliver something?”
The answer will inevitably be yes, she says, and capacity will be created as a result. “It is actually about space for doing the thinking and seeing that is of value,” Power emphasises. A leader focused on day-to-day operations may ask why a specific delivery is late, but one with a broader view would look for systemic bottlenecks.
Beyond freeing up time, she encourages owners to build deliberate networks. “Surround yourself with people who can help you. Get really, really clear about who is in my network that could actually help me, and are there mentors? Are there people who work adjacent to the work that I do?”
The third step is using existing time more strategically. Driving between jobs or commuting becomes an opportunity to listen to relevant podcasts about sector trends, while AI tools can supercharge industry research. Power notes that even basic AI use can open doors. “It might be to expand, to merge, to acquire, to get contracts and projects that we never thought were possible, but now with some basic AI, suddenly it is possible.”
AI assistants can also guide small business owners in how to think strategically once they’ve made the time to do it, Power says. The key is to keep an open mind. “It’s easy to think ‘change equals negative,’” she says. “But there might be some really great opportunities that come from this.”
