When the force-stop button gets slammed

In late March 2026 my body hit the force-stop button.  

It was my closest experience of burnout and it prompted some serious self-reflection, soul-searching, and eventually, some necessary strategic shifts.  

For me as a solo professional, I am my business. I am my brand. I am the work. While I have some admin and contractor support, no one can step in for what I do for my clients. If I'm down, the business is down.  

Being solo is a deliberate choice that suits my lifestyle at this time of life, and it comes with significant advantages that I love. But this is one big downside. And there is no way around it.  

This is not just about me though!

This principle is actually much bigger than solo business and my little story. When you're the only one who can deliver to your clients, it does bring strategic decisions about managing capacity into sharp focus, but really, it's no different for bigger organisations. All organisations are made up of people, and people have limits. That means organisations have limits.

And force-stop buttons.  

What's the force-stop button?

For me, my force-stop button was my immune system going down. I picked up every little bug one after another for two months while my family caught nothing, even from me, leaving me wondering if this was even virus-related at all.  

For organisations, force-stop buttons come in the form of major client or funding loss, critical information leaks or data breaches, workplace fatalities, PR crises, or major shifts in operating context that can threaten their very existence.  

The funny thing is, when these sorts of things happen, despite how important it is to us that we avoid these crises, we can almost always say we saw them coming. Not every time. There are those completely unexpected bolt out of the blue moments, but usually, there were signals that we ignored, downplayed or deferred until we were forced to pay attention.  

I ignored my body's signs for a long time. I got into bad habits of pushing on to finish things and meet deadlines even when my body needed me to slow down. I lost sight of the strategic importance of my own energy and stamina. I treated it as infinite when the reality was it was finite and running out.  

What I was really doing was trying to execute an unrealistic plan given what I had at my disposal to work with. The hard truth was that I wasn't tuned in enough to notice that my dwindling resources had gotten out of sync with my ambitions. Through an abundance of good intentions, I'd fallen into a trap of committing to something that was just out of reach for me to fully deliver on without sacrificing something else. Something had to give, and I wasn't willing to let it be client experience. So I went down instead.  

Ouch… tough lesson.  

When it's time for a strategic shift

In the aftermath, as I looked both backwards at how I got into this, and forwards about how to get out of it, I had to accept that some significant strategic shifts were required. I knew the changes I needed came back to that one truth - that my biggest strategic advantage is my own energy and headspace for creating. 

I thought I was being brave when I put a hold on two of my 5 offerings, put up a website announcement that I wasn't taking any more clients, and broke the news to some potential clients that they'd have to find someone else. But then a confronting conversation with two generous, insightful, intuitive wahine, who don't tend to take any prisoners, led me to realise that I hadn't gone far enough. I scaled back my plans for the coming months and turned my ambitions on their head - prioritising regaining energy over progress. Finally, I had a sense of control, and I felt my body registering safety again.  

These changes were about more than just reducing my workload. The two offerings I paused weren't the two draining most of my time, they were the two that were, for various reasons, the worst offenders for draining my energy and fragmenting my attention (despite the fact that I enjoyed delivering them). The scaling back of my projects probably didn't change the initial actions I needed to take; what was most powerful from an energy point of view was simply that they felt lighter.  

Finding your key strategic leverage points

So in our organisations, do we really understand what our biggest strategic leverage points are? The things that keep the lights on and the engine humming; the things that underly and drive the magic in what you deliver. And do we have reliable systems in place to send warning signals that will be heeded when they are at risk? How can we ensure small daily actions are protecting, rather than eroding, these critical differentiators? Even in the pursuit of another good thing?  

In your organisation what is the non-obvious thing that could hit the force-stop button? Is it reputation, public perception or social license? Large clients or funders that you're dependent on? Culture or innovation? These aren't always the first things we organise our efforts around, but shooting for profit or impact at the expense of these things can be completely counter-productive. Strategic thinking is as much about recognising and protecting your force-stop button before it gets slammed, as it is about making the right strategic shifts if it does.  

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