What Are You
Afraid Of?
Fear can certainly be a useful tool in business,
provided it isn't the fear of doing something right now. Don't wait, don't
hesitate.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
Time has a very nasty way of turning your assets into
liabilities. If you aren't moving forward or if you're spending too much time
looking into the rear-view mirror, you'll wake up one day soon and discover that
you've been left behind. Every company, large or small, should have the same,
very simple, motto to remind people day-in and day-out of the "need for
speed." I'd suggest "si non nunc quando" which translates
to "if not now, when?" because that says it all. Move it or lose it.
Excessive
waiting doesn't make for better decisions; it makes for lost time, demoralized
people, and a devastating loss of direction and momentum. Massive business
plans and strategy documents, millions of meetings, extensive third-party
consulting reports, and excessively detailed analyses are simply ways to hide
from the truth and avoid making the tough decisions. Elaboration in these cases
is often just a form of mental pollution.
Speed
is everything today and startups understand that necessity much better than
most big businesses because: (a) entrepreneurs all suffer congenitally from
"hurry sickness"; (b) the race to self-sustainability for a startup
is existential; if you don't get to some point of equilibrium where you
can stop pedaling (and fundraising)
for a moment or two in order to take stock of where you've been and where
you're heading, you're gonna be toast soon enough; and (c) if you're not in a
big hurry, you're probably already too late.
On the
other hand, in too many large organizations, there's a striking lack of
urgency, a reluctance to make hard choices, and a willingness to ignore the
inevitable until it's too late. Hoping that the problems will resolve
themselves and that the competition will go away isn't much of a strategy. As a
result, mediocre projects lumber on because no one has the courage to call a
halt; make-work jobs and featherbedding flourish because there's no
accountability and no one keeping score; and the business heads slowly and
continually downhill into irrelevance and obscurity. No one ever said it better
than T.S. Eliot: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a
whimper."
The
"bad" behaviors, which bring about these results, are obvious, but
regardless of the size of your business, if you don't consistently root out and
address the causes and concerns, you're never going to improve the current
state of affairs or get yourself out of the deepening hole that you're slowly
slipping into. This is clearly one of those cases where the big, old and
tradition-bound businesses can learn a great deal from the examples that abound
in the startup world. In fact, if I had to make a short catalog of the issues
that constantly recur whenever you see a business starting to go sideways, I'd
start with the 5 basic fears:
(1) Fear
of Failure
This is
the most common problem and frankly the one that's already been the most exhaustively discussed. It's still No. 1 on the hit parade, but I don't have a
whole lot to add to the prior conversation. Suffice it to say, if you let
your fears rather than your desires and goals drive your decisions, you're not
going to get anywhere. Entrepreneurs don't have all the answers, but the one
thing that they know for sure is that to pull off these new and special
adventures, your faith, especially in yourself, needs to be stronger than your
fears. They don't ask for permission; they wonder who's gonna stop them. And
they run toward their fears rather than away from them.
(2) Fear
of Success
This is
the least understood of the fears. Scaling is scary. You want to be sure that
the path you're about to embark on isn't a gangplank that you're about to walk
off. Rapid expansion along any dimension of your business isn't easy. Moreover,
just as many businesses get in trouble because they can't handle the radically
increasing demands of their customers, who tend to want more of a good thing,
and faster. In big businesses, everyone knows a story about an ex-employee who
got too far out over his or her skis and is no longer there. There are very few
prizes for being the one who's the budget buster even if the gamble looked
unbeatable to everyone at the beginning. This is why I often say that in the
startup world ignorance is a competitive advantage, because you don't know what
it is that you're not supposed to be able to do and so you just go out there
and get it done.
(3) Fear
of Choosing
I think
of this problem as a version of pre-buyer's remorse. Someone has to be willing
to step up to the plate and make a decision and then live with the
consequences. And, you need to strike a balance. Too few alternatives and you
make bad choices; too many choices and you never make a decision. Everything
that we do or decide not to do is a choice, but sitting around and putting off
the critical decisions is no longer an option. As all the great QBs like to
say, when you cock your arm, you need to go ahead and throw it and not spend a
lot of additional time thinking or talking about it. Entrepreneurs live by
their wits and their intuition. In their world, so many decisions are made in
real time and so quickly that analysis paralysis isn't really a problem although
there's always a long line of investors happy to say "I told you so"
when things go wrong. All that noise doesn't really matter much - any decision
beats no decision all day long.
(4) Fear
of Commitment
In an
ideal world, everything would be reversible, and take-backs and do-overs would
be as easy as pie. But, in the world we inhabit, especially when you're dealing
with a finite amount of resources, multiple options, and a very short window
for action, you're stuck with the choices you make. However, that's no excuse
for not choosing. It's a part of the leader's job-- playing safe just won't do.
You can't steal second base with one foot still firmly on first. Your team
needs to commit just as fully - not just in words, but also in their hearts and
in their actions.
(5) Fear
of Being Blamed
Playing
the blame game is a waste of everyone's time and one of the most destructive
parts of any company's culture. When things go wrong, there's no question that
you need to find out why. But, the goal isn't to beat someone up, it's to get
better and avoid the problem the next time. In the best new businesses, there
are only two instances when we blame people: when they don't ask for the help
they need and when they don't help their peers when they're asked.
Bottom
line: there's really no mystery here. Take a look at your own business and your
own team and see who's on the move--pushing the business ahead--and who's
afraid to act and waiting in the wings to be told what to do.
As Bob
Marley said: "You never know how strong you are, until being strong is
your only choice."
