If the outlook for your business feels unusually foggy right now, you’re not imagining it.
The NFIB’s latest Small Business Optimism report, published on October 14, put its Uncertainty Index at 90 for September. That’s up one point, and well above the historical average of 68. The Optimism Index slipped 0.8 points to 97.9, just below its 52-year average of 98.0.
NFIB’s chief economist, Bill Dunkelberg, summed it up: “Small business owners are proceeding with caution.”
The report held a second finding that I think matters even more for owners.
The Real Constraint is People
For the third month running, owners named labor quality or availability as their single biggest problem. 26% of owners chose it.
32% had job openings they couldn’t fill. Of those hiring or trying to hire, 87% reported few or no qualified applicants. As one NFIB state director put it: “Main Street has a math problem on its hands.”
Put those two findings together and you get a familiar picture. Owners don’t know what the next six months will bring, and they can’t easily hire their way out of trouble or into growth.
Caution makes sense in that environment. Freezing doesn’t.
What I See in Coaching Conversations
When uncertainty is high, I notice two common reactions in the owners I work with.
Some freeze. Every decision waits for “more clarity”, which never quite arrives. Meanwhile the team senses the hesitation and starts to worry.
Others react to every headline. Plans change week to week, and the team gets whiplash.
Neither works. What helps is a deliberate way of making decisions when you can’t see far ahead.
A Five-step Checklist for Leading Through Uncertainty
- Separate what you control from what you don’t. Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, list what you control: your pricing, your service, your team, your costs, your sales activity. On the right, list what you don’t: interest rates, the wider economy, government policy. Put your planning energy into the left column. Accept the right column as conditions to plan around.
- Make 90-day decisions, not annual bets. When the horizon is foggy, shorten it. Set clear priorities for the next quarter and review them at the end. Short cycles let you keep moving without betting the business on a forecast nobody can make.
- Protect your best people first. If qualified candidates are this scarce, keeping your strong performers is a growth strategy in itself. Ask yourself: who would hurt most to lose? When did you last have a real conversation with them about their future here? Don’t assume they know they’re valued. Protect your investment.
- Grow capability from within. If you can’t hire the skills you need, you’ll need to build some of them. Ask: who on my team could take on 20% more responsibility with the right support? What would that free me up to do? Management coaching of your team and stretch assignments are often cheaper and faster than an empty job posting.
- Decide your trigger points now. Agree in advance what results would make you speed up, hold steady or pull back. For example: “If inquiries stay above X for two months, we hire.” “If margin drops below Y, we pause the new project.” Decisions made calmly in advance are almost always better than decisions made in a panic later.
Communicate the Plan, Not Just the Decisions
One more thing. Your team is reading the same headlines you are. In uncertain times, people fill silence with their own worst-case stories.
You don’t need to have all the answers. You do need to tell people how you’re thinking about things: what you’re watching, what you’ll do if conditions change, and what you need from them. That alone reduces a great deal of anxiety.
The Takeaway
Uncertainty isn’t going away soon. The owners who come through it well usually aren’t the ones with the best forecasts. They’re the ones who keep making small, deliberate moves while others wait.
So, here’s my question for you: Which of these five steps would make the biggest difference in your business if you acted on it this week?
If you’d like a thinking partner to work through these decisions, that’s what business coaching is for. I’d be happy to talk. Ask me about my 2-day Corporate Coaching Course.
Source: “NEW NFIB SURVEY: Uncertainty Grows and Optimism Fades Slightly on Main Street in September,” NFIB, October 14, 2026. NFIB’s figures cover US small businesses.
