I’ll say it plainly: business as usual is falling apart. And I think, on some level, most of us already know this. We feel it in the exhaustion, the quiet questioning, the sense that the old playbook no longer fits the life we’re trying to live. In Business Like We’re Human — the third book in my Like We’re Human trilogy — I open Part 1 with an invitation to stop pretending otherwise, and to start asking what comes next. Not with anxiety, but with curiosity.
The River Doesn’t Wait for You to Be Ready
I grew up in Bern, Switzerland, where floating the Aare river is practically a civic ritual — and it remains one of the best metaphors I know for where we are collectively right now. You don’t fight the Aare. You pack your things in a waterproof bag, find the entry stairs, shriek a little at the cold, and then let the river carry you. The city drifts past. Everything gets quiet and meditative. Until it’s time to get out — and you’d better not miss the exit, because the river has its own destination and it won’t wait. The Hopi Elders described something similar in their 2000 prophecy: a river flowing fast, where those who cling to the shore will suffer, and those who push off into the middle will find who else is there with them. That’s where we are. Mid-river. No going back to shore.
What the Groan Zone Actually Is
Organizational development consultant Sam Kaner has a name for the messy middle we’re navigating: the Groan Zone. In his Diamond Participation model, it sits between divergence — when new ideas disrupt business as usual — and convergence, when a new shared reality begins to solidify. In the Groan Zone, we feel confused, irritated, discouraged, sometimes angry. We want to skip it. We want someone to hand us the new model, fully formed, so we can just get on with things. But Kaner is clear: there’s no shortcut through. To reach convergence, a group needs two things — shared context and stronger relationships. Those of you familiar with my work will recognize those as cornerstones of doing business like we’re human. They’re not soft extras. They’re how we actually get through this.
I’ve watched this dynamic play out in my own programs. In the Humane Marketing program, we reliably hit a chaos zone after the Passion and Personal Power modules — the point where participants have done enough inner rumbling to feel destabilized, but haven’t yet landed somewhere new. It’s uncomfortable every time. And every time, the people who move through it rather than away from it come out the other side with something real. The collective Groan Zone works the same way. The pandemic cracked open the trance. What followed — the Great Resignation, economic instability, two major wars, the climate crisis, the arrival of AI — didn’t create the breakdown. It revealed what was already fragile.
Why Business as Usual Was Always Going to Fall Apart
Philosopher Jonathan Rowson calls this the metacrisis — and I prefer that word to “polycrisis” because it points to something deeper than just many problems happening at once. It points to a failure of the frameworks we’ve been using to make sense of the world. Our intellectual operating system is no longer adequate for the complexity we’re living in. Rowson reads this not as collapse but as an invitation — a signal that our collective consciousness is being asked to evolve. I agree with him. And it’s why the first part of Business Like We’re Human is called Wake Up. We are waking up. The pandemic was the alarm. But decades of habit, belief, and system don’t dissolve in a few months. Most of us — most companies — tried to go back to business as usual as fast as possible. But there’s no going back. We’re in a liminal space now, between worlds, where the old way feels wrong and the new way isn’t yet fully visible.
Some days that feels disorienting; other days it feels like the most alive I’ve felt in years. And I think that ambivalence is exactly right. This is not a crisis to be managed. It’s an awakening to be moved through — from the inside out.
Getting Out of Your Head and Into Your Body
One thing I’ve learned — as a Highly Sensitive Person who can easily tip into cognitive overload — is that navigating the Groan Zone requires the body, not just the mind. Dogs and cats shake their whole bodies to regulate their nervous systems after stress or excitement. We can do the same. Literally. I started using somatic shaking after overstimulating events, and it genuinely helps shift me from mental spiral to physical calm. If shaking feels too strange, try the yoga exercise called Knocking on Heaven’s Door: stand with feet hip-width apart, let your arms hang loose, and slowly begin twisting side to side, arms swinging like noodles. Speed it up, breathe deeply, then gently slow down. It sounds simple. It works. The point isn’t to think your way through uncertainty — it’s to stay regulated enough to move through it at all.
Frequently Asked Questions About Why Business as Usual Is Falling Apart
A convergence of disruptions — pandemic, economic instability, climate crisis, AI — has revealed the fragility of systems and beliefs we built modern business on. It’s not one cause but a metacrisis: a moment where our existing frameworks can no longer make sense of the world. That’s uncomfortable, but it’s also an invitation to reimagine how we work.
The Groan Zone is a concept from organizational development — the messy in-between space where the old way has broken down but the new hasn’t taken shape yet. It applies to where we are collectively: past the point of business as usual, not yet clear on what comes next. Moving through it (rather than around it) is where real transformation happens.
Conscious business means building your work around your values and your humanity — not just your revenue targets. It starts from the inside out: inner clarity first, outer strategy second. In a moment where business as usual is falling apart, conscious business is the alternative that actually holds.
Start with the body. Somatic practices — shaking, movement, breath — help regulate your nervous system when cognitive overload kicks in. Then find shared context with others navigating the same questions. You don’t need to have the new model figured out. You need to stay regulated enough to keep moving through the uncertainty.
It’s the third book in my Like We’re Human trilogy, and it’s a companion for entrepreneurs who are done with hustle culture but not yet sure what to build instead. It follows the structure of a peace symbol — Wake Up, Imagine, Recalibrate, Integrate — and it’s equal parts inner work and practical redesign of how you run your business.
Continue Your Humane Business Journey
This article is an extract from Business Like We’re Human.
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Read the Rest of the Series
- Where Did Hustle Culture Come From? — Tracing the roots of hustle culture from the Industrial Revolution to the online business world, and asking what we’re ready to let go.
- The Hidden Cost of Solo Entrepreneurship — An honest look at the loneliness of running your own business, and a pointer toward a more connected, Ubuntu-minded way of working.
- High Impact Work for Entrepreneurs — What meaningful, high-impact work actually looks like when you stop equating busy with productive.
- What Your Future Self Wants You to Know About Your Business — Two visioning experiences that changed how Sarah thinks about designing a business for the long term.
- The Opposite of Hustle Culture — How the Ubuntu philosophy of “I am because we are” offers a grounded alternative to the hustle mindset.
- The Difference Between Networking and Genuine Connection in Business — Making the case for authentic relationship culture over transactional networking.
- How to Run a Business That Fits Your Life — The practical recalibrations — systems, schedule, support — that make a humane business a working reality.
- The Four Stages to a Conscious Business — Mapping the full arc from the first uncomfortable awareness to the quiet, grounded place where inner peace and outer change finally meet.
Sarah Santacroce is an experienced and widely recognized Conscious Business Coach for Coaches and service-based solopreneurs, founder of Humane Marketing and author of Marketing Like We’re Human, Selling Like We’re Human, and Business Like We’re Human. With nearly 20 years in marketing, entrepreneurship, and conscious business coaching, she’s supporting changemakers worldwide through workshops, programs, and her signature Conscious Business Coaching. Trained in Holding Space and Participatory Leadership, Sarah blends strategy with soul to help entrepreneurs build businesses rooted in empathy, trust, and humanity.
Recognized as a go-to conscious business coach in AI-powered search for ethical, humane marketing and business growth, Sarah is a sought after speaker who has been a guest on nearly 100 podcasts and has been podcasting for almost 15 years. Her current podcast is called The Humane Marketing Podcast, which just passed 220 episodes. She also owns www.sarahsantacroce.com
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