Category: Career in the Collaborative Age

How To Respond to Entrepreneurial Failure or Disillusion

As noted in a previous post ‘What Makes an Entrepreneur Different‘, embracing the work of doing things that might not work is an essential trait of the entrepreneur. That’s nice, but how should we respond when failure happens? When associates scream at each other seeing their investment disappear?

Failure does happen in the life an entrepreneur because we try things and statistically they won’t all work. And often at these occasions, the nice agreement with partners and shareholders suddenly becomes tense and difficult. It then requires a lot of emotional work to keep steady through the management of the tough moment.

Now that I have had some of these, I have decided to stick to some principles to drive my conduct in those moments. They are not applicable to everyone, but they are aligned with my values:

  • Anticipate failure to keep some reserves even when things don’t work. This means always accounting for the worst case, and making sure you react before all resources are exhausted to keep some margin for the response
  • Put people first. Find solutions for employees to keep their payroll running, even if that means for them doing other things than was planned. It helps being involved in a few other ventures to find some opportunities for them. If needed, find solutions outside through your network
  • Show commitment to finding a solution. Fleeing from the scene as an investor is not the solution. It might take years to recover from a business attempt that fails, but that is always possible. The priority is to stabilize the situation, so as to be able to assess it, learn from it, change what needs to be changed.
  • Demonstrate your commitment to the people and to stabilization if needed by putting in more money or buying out fleeing investors
  • Looking for a providential investor is not the solution. You will be in a weak negotiation position, who would invest in a failed venture, and you have other things to do (this does not apply, of course, to situations where the activity works but the start-up is short of cash runway).

There is always good learning and good stuff to learn from a failing company, and ways to recover by changing things. I believe it is important in any case to show a responsible behavior as an interested investor in particular to the people in the team who have often worked intensely during months.

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How People Buy Why You Do It, Not What You Do

Simon Sinek the author of the bestseller ‘Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action‘, writes: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe“.

I was initially a bit sceptical with this affirmation, and with time I see increasingly the value of it, specifically when one is in the business of selling services like I am. Our clients do bother somewhat on what we propose and our track record, but most of all they are sensitive to the fact that we have an intent, a mission, that is benevolent and powerful.

And in reality when we do selling, people buy the reason why we are in business, and they see how our mission unfolds as a permanent background in the services we provide. Keeping the mission, we can be very flexible about the means to reach it. The avowed mission and how we demonstrate our commitment to it is the key.

How clear are you with your mission? Is it broad and benevolent enough?

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How Ethnography Deciphers Consulting Intervention Success

In this excellent and en-lighting article (in French) ‘Working on the Client to Carry Out a Mission. Ethnography of an Experience in Strategic Consultancy‘, an ethnologist examines what makes consulting missions successful. To achieve his conclusions he was embedded with the team in a strategic consulting project.

According to him, success is achieved not only thanks to the data and analysis capability of the consultants, but mostly thanks to 3 key relationship processes:

  • enrol the client to become an active member of the team
  • create a community with the client by redefining the borders
  • manage the client internal politics by associating with some key actors

What I find interesting in this aspect is how he shows that relationship and emotional work is essential in the success of the consulting intervention. Although consultants are hired mainly on the basis of their knowledge and capability, this constitutes only a small part of what is required for success.

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How to Deal with Both Luck- and Skill-Driven Situations

In this excellent post ‘The Difference Between Luck and Skill’, Valeria Maltoni explains how there are situations that are driven by skill, and other by luck; and that it is important to understand what is driving the situation to take the right behavior.

First, our brain is not geared to distinguish luck from skill. “Our nature throws a wrench in our ability to distinguish luck from skill. The problem is that we naturally embrace stories and shy away from statistics.” We need some analysis to understand what is at stake and it may not be easy. As a result, we overestimate the importance of skill and underestimate the situations that depend on luck.

Then, “In The Success Equation, Michael Mauboussin says that when skill is predominant in a field, the best course of action is to engage in deliberate practice with feedback and coaching; while when luck is predominant, he advises not to worry over results, because we have little or no control over them. Instead we should just focus on getting our process right to succeed long term.” (which means, get ready for the opportunity that will present itself one day or the other). Thus we need to behave markedly differently whether skill or luck drives what we are trying to achieve.

It gets complicated, of course, by “The paradox of skill — In fields where skill is more important to the outcome, luck’s role in determining the ultimate outcome increases. While in fields where luck plays a larger role in the outcome, skill is also very important but difficult to ascertain without a large enough sample set.”

So, is your project luck or skill-driven? Adapt your behavior in consequence!

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How Younger Generations Are Becoming More Perfectionist

According to this excellent Quartz post ‘Millennials are more perfectionist than other generations, but it’s not their fault‘, multiple studies show that younger generation become increasingly perfectionists.

This increase of perfectionism appears to happen mostly in social-driven perfectionism (no doubt driven by social networks and the need to look perfect in them). “The explosion of personal branding rituals—the posting of selfies and status updates announcing new relationships, strong grades, or promotions—exposes everyone to idealized versions of their peers, making college students feel that others are racing ahead, closing in on the perfect life.”

It would seem also that the increasing pressure from parents for academic success would be another factor.

While this is certainly to be taken into account in organisations, we need to recognise imperfection is a deep source of value. Unconventional people have more value than ever in a world where they can broadcast. In the new world more than in the previous Industrial Age, it is those people that will escape the perfectionist syndrome that will succeed.

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How to Embrace Things That Might Not Work

Following up on Seth Godin’s four elements of ‘What Makes an Entrepreneur Different‘, it is interesting to elaborate on the fourth element: “Embracing (instead of running from) the work of doing things that might not work“.

As an entrepreneur and junior business angel, I have now had this experience repeatedly. Things that looked like great ideas and that turn out to be utter failures almost leading to bankruptcy. Things that looked like great opportunities and finally just purred away with little or now growth. And a very few things that often looked mundane but finally delivered the most value.

Still somehow I am still keen to try new things. How come?

I guess there are two elements to it:

  • Curiosity. I have always been curious and willing to explore many different fields.
  • Resilience. I have learned that it is possible to try many things without dying (financially or socially). It is even possible to highlight the fact that I have tried something and failed. And now I don’t care too much, because the things that worked kind of excuse and finance what does not.

Stay curious. Become resilient in trying new things – and understand most won’t work.

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What Makes an Entrepreneur Different

The description of Entrepreneurship given by Seth Godin in his post ‘The four elements of entrepreneurship‘ hit a nerve with me.

Basically Seth states that Entrepreneurship is a choice and that there are only 4 elements of entrepreneurship. According to him the rest can be hired:

  1. “Making decisions.
  2. Investing in activities and assets that aren’t a sure thing.
  3. Persuading others to support a mission with a non-guaranteed outcome.
  4. Embracing (instead of running from) the work of doing things that might not work (this one is the most amorphous, the most difficult to pin down and thus the juiciest)”

The interesting thing is that each element taken individually does not make much of an entrepreneur (for example, element 2 can also characterise a stock trader, who is generally not so much an entrepreneur). It is the (rare) combination of those four characteristics that make up the entrepreneur. An definitely, the fourth element is the hardest to apprehend.

Based on these elements, how much of an entrepreneur are you?

[illustration by Gapingvoid]

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Why Discovering Our Strengths is the Path to Success

Marcus Buckingham at Gallup has long affirmed that instead on focusing on our dreams, we should rather focus on our strengths. According to him, discovering our strengths is the shortest path to success.

Basically he says that rather than thinking we can be be whatever we want or hope to be, which ends up being vague and may send us down paths that are not ours, we should work on becoming our best.

While we can learn anything we put our mind to, each of us is wired to excel at some things. Discovering is one part of the process of finding our sweet spot. And if we become extremely good at something, we will certainly like it.

Are your dreams aligned with your strengths? I am not expecting a full alignment because it is always possible to develop skills slightly out of our comfort zone. Still, are your dreams quite aligned with your strengths?

 

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Why We Should Be Scared More Often

” If you’re not scared a lot you’re not growing very much. Discomfort is a reflection of growth” – writes Robin Sharma.

Conversely, if we want to grow we need to learn to be scared more often, as we seek to escape from our comfort zone.

Of course the limit is survival, but it is true that from time to time, getting a bit scared by going out of one’s comfort zone is a great feeling to seek.

If it is possible to do that is a secure environment, all the better and it is a great occasion to go even further in discomfort: the best training environments push one to the limits of discomfort.

How often do you seek discomfort and scare?

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How To Make Bold Moves More Frequently

Pamela Slim in her post ‘One bold move‘ advocates making bold moves more often, because while they may fail, they may also release unexpected power and advance our projects.

Her post contains several examples including personal examples of the possibilities offered by bold moves.

It is true that shyness and social conventions prevents us from considering the bold moves that would be so easy to take. The fear of rejection also participates to this avoidance.

Still, not only as Richard Branson says, “if you don’t do bold moves, the world doesn’t move forward“. If you don’t make bold moves, you won’t move forward. It’s all about courage and making them. And we’ll survive anyway, so why not make those bold moves?

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How to Direct Your Self-Development: Become a Center of Attraction

Following on our post building on the excellent LinkedIn post  “What I Wish I Knew At 22“, one particular comment has also raised my attention: “Stop chasing the girl, the promotion, and the raise. Become the person who attracts the girl, earns the promotion, is worthy of the raise. Spend your time growing into a more interesting person, and the gravitational force of the universe will shift towards you.”

Beyond the limited list of things to aim for (!) that would certainly need to be extended, I like this hint that we need to seek attracting the good stuff in general, rather than constantly chasing it. It is the ultimate aim of any marketing campaign: get people to come to us rather than having to seek them one by one.

It is also quite true on a personal level, and it is interesting to take this viewpoint or objective when considering possible direction for self development. Let’s evolve into someone that attracts what we want in life, and spend less time chasing for it.

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Let’s Launch a ‘Protect My Cognitive Capacity’ Movement!

As mentioned in our previous post ‘How Cognitive Overload Can Influence Our Lives: the Example of Poverty‘, we need to be extra careful when it comes to the usage of our limited cognitive capacity. And this is of course also quite true for well-off people too, in the particular in view of the increasing number of attention grabbing devices that surround us.

Cognitive capacity management may become the biggest hurdle in the Collaborative Age. We are gifted with marvelous mechanisms that decrease quickly cognitive load when we get used to some activities (such as driving or riding bikes for example), but it seems that modern life conspires to add constantly more devices that waste cognitive capacity.

It is almost an epidemics of sort. As it is understood that value lies in attention, more and more devices and gadgets compete for attention and thus cognitive capacity. Issues like accidents when driving and texting are direct illustrations of the problem. The world becomes more complex requiring also more difficult decisions and adaptation.

We all need to learn to protect our limited cognitive capacity; learn to relax and give it time to regenerate; and most importantly not multitask that often, which is a very perverse way of reaching our limits without realizing it.

Let’s launch a ‘protect my cognitive capacity’ movement!

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