Check your email, go online, turn on the radio in the car or the TV at home - you can quickly feel like you're being flooded with negative news. Crisis upon crisis.

But I don't think it's just a feeling. Because in my career as an entrepreneur, I've never experienced anything like the quasi-permanent crisis we've been in for more than two years. The outbreak of the pandemic, the supply disruptions, the next Corona wave, then war, the energy crisis.

But I also think: All this is no reason to be paralyzed by fear of the flood of negativity. For me, as a person and as an entrepreneur, it is rather a reason to be confident - and I would like to share this confidence with you.

At the mercy of change

When I look back at my company and the macro-events that have shaken up the corporate and economic world, 9/11 in 2001 and the financial and economic crisis triggered by the Lehman Brothers transactions in 2008 stand out. But no matter how drastic both events were, I still have the impression that the subsequent phase of uncertainty, the feeling of turbulence, of being at the mercy of change, lasted only for a relatively short time. Normality quickly returned, at least for the decision-makers in the business world. Things went on, things became calm. Quasi-stability characterized a time when people could have the reassuring feeling that they were not at the mercy of raging changes and crises - at least that's how it looked.

Deceptive calm

When I look back today, it was a deceptive calm, a calm that could only come about because we didn't look closely.

No one likes change. Because change first means uncertainty, and uncertainty means stress. And we avoid that as much as possible. You and I as individuals, but also we as a community, as a society. And so, before the outbreak of the pandemic, we looked past many of the changes that are now catching up with us as a crisis. Keyword climate. Or energy. Or supply chains. Or, or ... We had a good sense of calm that was actually inattention - masking change.

We have continued as before. Because we had the feeling that everything is stable, everything is in a good balance.

This feeling is now over in the permanent crisis. And if we manage to develop a certain attitude toward it, that's even a good thing. Good, because the crisis in this sense has something enlightening about it.

Facing change with confidence

The staccato of crises that have created a sense of permanent crisis over the past two years reveals two fundamentally different ways of dealing with such change:

One assumes that we can ultimately control and steer the change. If we intervene with appropriate measures - as politicians, for example, are trying to do - then we can get a grip on the crisis. Then we can stop the change, steer it in our sense into calm waters. Such an attitude would prefer to ignore change: What was possible yesterday is possible tomorrow. And I believe that this is precisely what is impossible - and makes us the helpless pawn of change.

The other way of dealing, and this is the attitude we have cultivated at allsafe, lives with the insight that change cannot be stopped. The permanent crisis in which we all currently find ourselves brought this insight to light: I can't change the course of events, change happens. That is life. I cannot escape it. So I can only learn to love this situation we are always in, life, change. I can only accept change as what life is all about, for you, for me, for my company, for society, and try to adapt to it in a way that moves me forward.

This way you can try to develop confidence.

That makes me proud to have experienced at allsafe that this is possible: We can look forward with confidence because today we know and have experienced that we can adapt, that we can react calmly and appropriately to changes, that we have developed the self-confidence, the resilience to master any situation together. That together we can go through uncertain times with energy, with attention and also joy in doing.

Looking at my employees and the allsafe performance community, I can say today: "The next few months will certainly remain unsettled and we will always have new surprises. Then it's a matter of being prepared for problems, because that's life, adapting to the new situation - and we can do that. We have the confidence to find our way into the future. We can do change."

And that is precisely the confidence I wish you and your team. Confidence? Especially now!

Detlef Lohmann

In a nutshell
Embrace change.
Learn from the changes and your new situation.
See the positive in change and develop confidence.