Yom Kippur and the small business

We are now in a part of the Jewish calendar that is rife with holidays. We just completed Yom Kippur this weekend. There was one prayer that got me thinking.  The first part of the holiday includes the service called the Kol Nidre service. At this point of the holiday the fast is only an hour or so old so I can actually think coherently. Kol Nidre is a whole service, but there is a specific prayer as well. The specifics of the prayer are somewhat muddled legal language but the gist is that it is meant to release you from any contracts you made the prior year. That got me thinking.

Since Spring Insight is young and nimble, we aren’t bound by too many contracts but I remember the feeling of having made long-term commitments both to provide and consume products and services. There is something both terrifying and exhilarating about completely absolving one’s self or one’s business from all prior contracts.  Imagine waking up and not being bound to pay for, or receive the services you were contracted for the day prior… not being bound to provide the services you were responsible to provide yesterday. Does this seem to me to feasible, or even desirable?  No, not really.  But is there something in there that is worth considering? I think so.  Having all contracts evaporate once a year… bad. Not taking contracts and commitments for granted but instead actively thinking about whether those agreements you have previously made still fit properly… very good.

So, why not declare a Yom Kippur for your business? Think about your contracted services, your fixed costs, the contracts you have to do work for others. Do they continue to make sense or is it time to absolve them?

~e