Business as Usual Is Over. Adaptability Is the Job Now.
[8 min read]
Every morning, coffee conversations start the same way lately.
A sigh.
And a quiet hope that things will “settle down soon”.
They won’t.
For a long time, business as usual was a reasonable ambition. It implied continuity, predictability and the belief that if you executed well enough, the environment would eventually calm down.
Across the UK, Europe, and the US, the signals are lining up in a way that’s hard to ignore. Pressure is no longer cyclical. It’s structural. And SME leadership teams waiting for stability to return are discovering it never quite does.
In early 2026, The Times reported restructuring data showed a sharp rise in so-called “zombie” companies in critical financial distress. Tens of thousands of UK businesses are now able to service debt, but are unable to invest, adapt or grow. In parallel, NBC News reported that in 2025, the US just recorded its weakest year for job creation since the pandemic, with hiring levels closer to 2020 crisis conditions than recovery.
The reasons are piling up:
Interest rates remain higher for longer.
Trade tensions and tariff threats are back.
AI is reshaping whole categories faster than skills, regulation, or organisations can keep up.
Demand is uneven and harder to predict.
This isn’t a temporary shock; it’s the new operating environment and it demands a different kind of leadership.
The real problem: leadership systems built for a calmer world
Most SME leadership and management models were built for a world with:
steady demand
predictable labour markets
cheap capital
and time to course-correct
That world has gone.
In work across cultures, geographies and disciplines, the pattern is remarkably consistent. Leaders aren’t failing because they lack intelligence or effort. They’re failing because their systems, habits and expectations are still optimised for stability.
Our advice is clear: in 2026, volatility isn’t an interruption. It’s the baseline.
Yet many organisations still treat adaptation as an exceptional event: a restructure, a transformation programme, a one-off “change initiative”. Something to get through before normality resumes.
Adaptability isn’t a plan B anymore. It’s the operating system. And after 2025, SMEs are now taking note.
Why “business as usual” quietly creates zombie companies
Zombie businesses aren’t created by laziness or incompetence. They’re created by lag.
Lag between what customers are actually doing and what leadership believes.
Lag between what markets now demand and how teams are staffed.
Lag between what the strategy deck says and what operations can really deliver.
Most businesses don’t fall into distress overnight. They slide into it because:
costs harden while demand softens
teams stay aligned to yesterday’s reality
decisions arrive too late to preserve options
By the time pain shows up in cash flow, the room to manoeuvre has already shrunk.
That’s why so many businesses today feel busy but stuck, exhausted by activity, but not moving meaningfully forward. More and more, we see in boardrooms that resilience now lives in how fast you can rethink, not how long you can endure.
The mindset shift: get comfortable being uncomfortable
The most important shift SMEs need to make now isn’t structural. It’s psychological.
Leaders need to stop treating discomfort as a temporary phase and start treating it as signal.
Effective leadership in this environment is less about certainty and more about four things:
Sense-making under uncertainty
Turning noisy, contradictory signals into a clear story people can act on.
Timing, not perfection
Making “good enough, soon enough” decisions instead of “perfect, too late” ones.
Designing for optionality
Building choice into structures, not just commitment into plans.
Staying close to reality
Shortening the distance between what’s really happening and what leadership sees.
Instead of asking, “When does this settle?” the better question is:
“How do we stay adaptable while it doesn’t?”
Matching strategy to capability (where most SMEs stumble)
One of the most common failure points is a mismatch between where the business needs to go and what the team is actually capable of delivering today.
The fix isn’t panic hiring or indiscriminate cost-cutting.
It’s a clear-eyed gap analysis.
In practice, that means:
defining the real direction of travel for the next 12–24 months
assessing current capability honestly: skills, decision rights, capacity, dependencies
identifying the gaps that actually matter
recalibrating respectfully through retraining, role redesign, selective hiring, or fractional expertise
Leaders who do this early save the culture - protect morale and performance.
Those who avoid it usually face harder, more emotional conversations later.
Linking strategy and operations is no longer optional
Another recurring pattern in stressed SMEs is strategy treated as an annual event.
That no longer works.
In volatile environments, strategy and operations must be continuously linked:
clear OKRs that translate strategy into real priorities
defined decision rights using simple frameworks like RACI or RAPID
live KPI dashboards that show reality, not reassurance
regular, lightweight reviews that adjust course without theatre or blame
This isn’t bureaucracy. It’s how drift is prevented.
When teams understand why priorities shift and how decisions are made, anxiety drops and execution improves.
Our advice for SME’s: Technology doesn’t fix misalignment, use it wisely, it just exposes it faster.
Dynamic teams are a structural advantage
With hiring slowing, employment costs rising, and AI accelerating change, many SMEs are rethinking team models.
Permanent, fully-loaded headcount isn’t always the right answer.
What’s emerging instead:
fractional leaders in product, finance, data or operations
specialist capability brought in when it’s needed
smaller core teams supported by flexible expertise
Used well, this reduces fixed-cost risk, increases access to senior capability and keeps organisations adaptable rather than brittle.
The distinction matters because formal, governed flexibility is an advantage. Covert, unmanaged flexibility is a risk.
The bottom line
Business as usual isn’t coming back.
The macro data makes that clear.
The labour market confirms it.
The rise of distressed businesses and new risks like polygamous working reinforce it.
Florido’s final reflection
The real question is whether your leadership model has evolved fast enough to meet it, and if not, what needs to change in the next 12 months so it does.
Contact us now if you want to:
stress-test your operating model against today’s volatility
close leadership and capability gaps before they become crises
build adaptability into how your business actually runs
Start with a conversation.
We’ll help you understand where flexibility is missing and what to do about it.