The Pressure Tests

Welcome back to our “getting out alive” month, today we’re talking about leading in tough times.

Sit back and enjoy the read and I hope these amazing jewels help and resonate with all of you. If you get to the end, there’s also a great article I wrote on why rents aren’t actually down across the country even though that’s what is reported.

Let’s get into it.

We continue to grow each week, and we’re grateful because it means something is resonating. If someone in your circle would benefit from new ideas, fresh perspectives, and thoughtful conversations, feel free to share this with them.

⏳️ Estimated Read Time: 7 minutes

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Lessons in Leadership

Every year we hear that times are unprecedented but the truth is, difficult periods are not always the cause of new problems, they often expose the ones that already existed.

When things are going well, it is easy to let small issues slide because they do not feel urgent, and the business continues to move forward despite them. But when things begin to turn, those same issues get magnified quickly.

What once felt like a minor inefficiency can suddenly become a real constraint.

What once felt like a manageable gap can turn into something that slows the entire team down. This is why systems matter so much, especially before you need them.

As structure becomes more important, paradoxically, so does creativity.

When things are not going your way, the instinct is to push harder on the same path, to try to force progress through effort. But often the friction is not telling you to push harder, it is telling you to step back.

To zoom out.

Because sometimes what you thought was right is not right anymore, and staying locked into that path just leads to a wall.

This is where creativity becomes practical and where you are solving for a path that is not obvious and may not look like what you planned.

Another theme that came through clearly is that leadership is not static, and the way you lead when things are working is not the same as when things are uncertain.

In more stable times, a collaborative approach works well. Asking the team what they think, opening up decisions, and involving others in shaping direction can build ownership and energy.

But in hard times, that same approach can have the opposite effect.

Because when people feel uncertainty, they are not always looking for more questions. They are looking for clarity and someone to guide them.

And when leadership responds to uncertainty with more uncertainty, even unintentionally, it can make people feel less secure rather than more.

That does not mean ignoring feedback, but creating a confidence in your decisions that doesn’t rely on a majority vote.

The conversation around the critical path led to a simple but powerful analogy, which is the idea of “Herbie”, from a book I read in business school “The Goal”

Herbie is the thing that slows everything down. The constraint that quietly determines how fast everything else can move.

In the example, Herbie is the kid on a hiking trip who keeps falling behind, getting distracted, and slowing the entire group down, regardless of how fast everyone else is trying to go.

And the realization is that the group does not move at the speed of its fastest members, it moves at the speed of Herbie.

That same dynamic exists inside a company.

You can have multiple initiatives running, teams working hard, and progress being made across different areas, but if there is one dependency that everything else relies on, that becomes your pace.

And the challenge is that Herbie is not always obvious.

Hard times have a way of removing everything that is not essential.

They expose the gaps in your systems, the clarity of your leadership, the focus of your team, and the reality of your culture.

They force you to simplify. To decide what actually matters.

To lead in a way that is more direct, more certain, and more grounded than what may have been required before.

And in that sense, they are less about survival in the moment and more about revealing what the company is actually built on.

Because when things are working, a lot can be hidden.

When they are not, everything becomes visible.

Want to get ahead of things? Consider an audit where the top issue for each department is diagnosed, followed by a tactical plan for solving it. Consider communication loops, operational tasks or documentation processes. We recommend using AI to help you diagnose AND to help find efficiencies.

If you want us to dive deeper on this, hit reply and let us know.

Hold the Victory Lap

If you’ve been reading the government’s latest housing updates, you might think Kelowna has finally turned a corner.

They’re pointing to a 7% vacancy rate — the highest among major Canadian cities — along with a drop in average asking rents.

From the podium, it looks like a policy win.

Before we celebrate, it’s worth looking at what’s actually being measured.

Affordability is being framed around monthly rent.

What’s missing is the product itself.

While rents have come down slightly, the size of the units has shrunk even faster.

As of early 2026:

Now look at it properly:

That’s not a decrease. It’s a 35% increase in cost per square foot.

You’re not paying less for housing, you’re paying more for less space.

That 7% vacancy rate isn’t stability. It’s timing.

These units were started years ago and are only now hitting the market.

At the same time:

We are consuming today what was planned years ago, with very little coming next.

Once this wave of micro-units gets absorbed — and it will — the pipeline behind it is empty.

That sets up a classic whipsaw:

The next 12–24 months won’t look like relief. They’ll look like acceleration.

What we’re left with is a market producing:

Layer in taxes, zoning constraints, and forced “affordability” requirements, and the outcome is predictable:

Only the smallest, most expensive-per-foot units get built.

When government tries to act as both architect and accountant, we don’t get balance.

We get distortion. Less space. More cost.

It may be time to stop celebrating short-term optics and start focusing on long-term function.

Because what’s being built right now isn’t just expensive.

It’s increasingly unlivable.

Some Olympic Positivity