This week has been an incredible roller coaster ride. I started it with attendance at an American Business Media conference in Chicago, where I heard an incredibly smart and provocative presentation by the consultants Booz & Co (more on that in a future post). I also participated in a panel where I managed to get a few laughs and some heads nodding, my usual goals at these things. And, in turn, I heard some good ideas and gained some new insights from others which I could bring back to the office. Not a bad start to the week.

But then I got a look at our current forecast for the balance of 2008. As many of you know, we ask our division heads, publishers and business managers to put forecasts together every month, giving us a view on how they see the year shaping up. Usually by the time we get to the October forecast (submitted in mid-October), we have a pretty good notion about how the year will end. Not this time. The November forecast shows a considerably more pessimistic view, based on current trends in classified, display and law firm advertising, conference attendee registrations, online revenues and even some of our product sales areas. Whereas in past forecasts our primary problems were in some key markets--particularly commercial real estate and legal help wanted advertising--this time virtually every area took a significant hit. Ouch.

Reminds me of the maps CNN was showing last weekend of the California wild fires. At first there was just one large but manageable blaze. But then, with the wind swirling around, embers started to fly and suddenly there were new fires popping up all over the place.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Those of you who took psychology courses in college know that those are the five stages that people go through when dealing with illness or grief. And they also represent the feelings people experience when going through profound business change--moving from a familar world to one which is new, different and filled with many unkowns. For us it's not just the changes brought about by a sudden decline in the economy, but also those that are the result of the increasingly rapid transition we are going through from a print-based media world to a digital one.

I can tell from some of the notes I've received from Incisive staff that we have a number of people who are still in the Denial stage, not quite willing to admit that the troubles in the economy plus the structural changes in the media world will impact our business. Sorry to inform you--we are being impacted and our job isn't to hide from the facts but to deal with them.

I can also tell that some folks are well into the Anger stage, I guess figuring that everything would be fine with the economy or this business if not for the people in charge. Believe me, I think there's plenty of blame to be spread around among the bankers and government folks for trashing the country's financial system. But with regard to Incisive, I think we have played our hand extremely well, and have a staff of amazingly talented, experienced and hardworking professionals to see us through this downturn. Not one of us enjoys cutting costs, downsizing staff or making whatever hard and unpleasant decisions the circumstances warrant. We would all much rather build our business, come up with and implement new ideas, install and take advantage of new technology, and generally have fun while doing it. Unfortunately, that's not what these times call for.

We need to move as quickly as we can to Acceptance of the new reality, and figuring how our businesses can thrive under permanently changed circumstances. I think Incisive's businesses will, in fact, do very well in the new media environment, and every day we are taking steps to ensure that success. But getting from here to there is going to take the full engagement of everyone on staff, and no doubt there will be some difficult decisions to take along the way. Use this blog, or direct notes to me, to make sure that you understand the nature of those changes, ask the questions that you have about what we are doing and why, and to share your thoughts on how best to proceed.