Alina Bas Consulting

04/17/2026

𝗨𝗿𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁: If you’re employed, Do This Now. Don’t assume you’ll have time to prepare for a layoff later, or that a layoff won’t affect you.

Some people are finding out they’ve been laid off when their login access is denied. The badge stops working. No meeting, no warning. Just locked out, which is followed by a brief impersonal email from the organization about termination.

Five, ten, twenty years of doing solid, reliable work, and often being called indispensable, and then one morning, your entire professional history inside that company disappears behind a login you no longer have.

If you’re employed right now, don’t assume you’ll have time to prepare later. 𝗗𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄:

1. 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝗼𝗳𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀.

Save personal contact info for colleagues, clients, and partners, to the extent you are legally allowed by the company. Connect on LinkedIn. Get personal emails or phone numbers where appropriate, because if you only have work emails for your colleagues and rely on the company system to pull up those email addresses, you can’t connect anymore if either one of you gets fired.

2. 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘀.

Save messages of praise, thank-yous, and recognition. Within policy allowance, keep what reflects your contribution.

3. 𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆.

Reviews, feedback, ratings. Anything that tells the story of your work.

4. 𝗞𝗲𝗲𝗽 𝗮 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.

Maintain a private, ongoing log of projects, decisions, outcomes, and metrics. Not a resume. A raw archive you can shape later.

5. 𝗘𝘅𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘇𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.

Start forming your own point of view publicly. Write, comment, share insights. If your voice only exists inside your company, it may not travel with you when your role changes.

Preparedness is not about being paranoid, it is about taking ownership.

The career is yours, and your organization is your partner for part of the journey.

***
I coach executive clients to make clear decisions under conditions of uncertainty. If you feel it is time to think more deliberately about your career and act on it, book a Strategic Planning Session through my site (link in the comments; AlinaBas (dot) com (slash) schedule).

Check whether your company sponsors leadership development for your role, as our work may breathe new life into your current position. This might be the most practical step you take this year for your career, in addition to learning AI.

04/14/2026

When was the last time you said a genuine, happy “wow”? What actually contributes to you feeling “wowed”? Read "When even the Moon feels boring", https://www.alinabas.com/blog/when-even-the-moon-feels-boring Image Credit:

03/06/2026

Clarity in decision-making is not necessarily what we assume it is.

What if leaders seeking outcome clarity are actually looking for the wrong thing?

03/06/2026

Is clarity overrated? What if leaders seeking outcome clarity are actually looking for the wrong thing? https://mailchi.mp/970531c8a407/alinabasconsulting-10973732

01/29/2026

New year, same you? As January is coming to an end and gym crowds begin to dwindle again, it becomes clear that “new year, new you” is not really happening. More importantly, meaningful change tends to happen differently, and here is why.

The Ship of Theseus is a curious thought experiment posed by a Greek philosopher Plutarch. With time, as planks of the ship crack or decay, they are swapped out for new planks. If all of the ship’s planks and parts are eventually replaced, is it still the same ship?

I believe it is.

Not because nothing has changed about the ship, but because changes happened as a continuation. The history, the lore, the ledger and the legend of the ship are still attributed to it, regardless of whether its planks are new or old.

It is a useful metaphor for thinking about ourselves.

New Year resolutions should not require abandoning who we have been or instantaneously replacing all of our undesirable habits and patterns. The idea of “the new you” suggests severing the connection with “the previous you”, but development or sustainable changes rarely happen like this.

We are more like the Ship of Theseus.

We don’t have to dismantle the whole structure in order to become better. We retain our history as we build new capacities and create new stories of who we are. We selectively drop habits that don’t serve us, replace parts that stopped working, or change assumptions that are outdated.

We remain ‘the same ship’ in spirit and in our history through all the changes, even if we choose to define ourselves by the newer parts of the story. And it is not a bad thing.

This is not to say that our identity is fixed; it can certainly evolve. Someone who never thought of themselves as athletic starts going to the gym, and months later, after making a rigorous training schedule a routine, they may now see themselves as athletes. They didn’t become “a different person,” but got stronger and faster, and their narrative of their identity got an upgrade.

Resolutions aside, being the "same you" is not the problem. Let's just keep strengthening what already works. Replace the metaphorical planks that no longer do their job, as you are able and willing. Let change be additive.

Let's intentionally continue becoming more fully ourselves, whatever this means to us in our current contexts, plank by plank.

12/31/2025

I often start coaching sessions by asking two questions: What’s going really well? What could be going better? See a rew gentle and powerful prompts to reset for 2026. https://www.alinabas.com/blog/celebrate-and-reset-2026

12/27/2025

I’m thrilled to be presenting at The Oceania Futures and Foresight Symposium 2026 in Brisbane (Meanjin), Australia. I’ll discuss my research on wayfinding as a necessary and legitimate strategy for advancing in uncertainty. This project came out of my PhD research, conducted under the wise guidance of Dr Viktor Dörfler.

The symposium brings together the voices highlighting Indigenous, Pacific, and Oceanic ancestral wisdom and international scholarly voices on foresight and futures. It is a rare opportunity to understand modern wayfinding through Oceanic and Indigenous lenses.

I look forward to the conversations that will certainly expand the way we think about futures, strategy, and sensemaking in our complex and uncertain world.

12/18/2025

Inspired by Esther Perel ‘s conversation with a client on her podcast, I’m adding a fantastic question to my coaching toolkit:

“Is this a problem that needs to be solved, or is it a paradox that needs to be managed?”

12/03/2025

Want to do something playful and new for the holidays? Let's run an experiment for your curious mind: what happens when you tap intuition on purpose? https://mailchi.mp/a373acf95af3/alinabasconsulting-10972313

11/19/2025

Perfect timing is often a myth. We roasted a Thanksgiving turkey in mid October this year, for a good reason. This is what we learned from it. https://mailchi.mp/27ad238f48aa/alinabasconsulting-10972036