A colleague recently sent me a strategy article—Is This a Moment for Strategic Hibernation?—challenging the advice that health and human service organizations need to invest in growth in times of economic uncertainty. That advice is based on business research that found that the organizations that ‘thrived’ after a period of market turbulence had an aggressive growth strategy during the downturn (see What Really Prevents Companies from Thriving in a Recession and Is Your Organization In The 17% Or The 9%—Or Somewhere In Between?).

The concept of ‘hibernation’ during a time of uncertainty is the exact opposite—“quietly preserving internal capacities while reducing external exposure.” The proponents of this strategic approach argue that it…