#65 - Viewing Friction as the Spark of Personal & Strategic Innovation
A note on mindset
Tl;dr — The next time you feel friction or fear (of failure) at work, lean into that fear. Ask yourself why you feel fear, ask yourself what could have or will lead to a better outcome, and then dare to actually do that thing. Try to view each setback as an opportunity to improve yourself and the products you’re building
Hello readers!
As you may have noticed, this “mostly weekly” newsletter has evolved to being more of a “every few weeks” affair. Why? Well, for one: I’m in the earliest days of building Homegrown (new website, check it out) while also preparing to become a new Dad. It has been one of the single most rewarding periods of my life already, and it’s about to get even more rewarding (and, quite literally, poopy).
I also never viewed this as a “you must write every week!” situation. It’s always been a, “write fast, write raw, embrace imperfection, hit send, and get on with your life” kind of outlet.
With that preamble done, I want to share some thoughts about mindset.
Mindset is Everything
As you already know, I think about this a lot. Every day. Multiple times per day, because I think your mindset is actually the single most important factor that determines what you do and don’t accomplish.
I was reminded of this two weeks ago when I got the chance to hear one of my personal business heroes, Jesse Itzler (co-owner of the Atlanta Hawks and one of the founders of Marquis Jets and Zico Coconut Water). He wrote this book that I absolutely loved about inviting a former Navy SEAL into his home for a month (or something like that) on his journey to be able to run hundred-mile races. He’s an insane human being in the best way possible, and much of his personal philosophy can be summed up in one line:
I Will Not Quit.
Mmmmmm, yes. That is just so powerful and so instructive for overcoming challenges and/or seizing opportunities in your life.
I Will Not Quit.
This is what I’ve told myself for decades, pushing through challenges, and building on strengths. And pressing advantages in strategic games when things are going well. Always on offense.
I Will Not F*cking Quit.
This is what I tell myself every single day now, because the only more guaranteed in startups than the prospect of running out of funding is the presence of roadblocks, every single day. And our team uses roadblocks as a way to dial in and be better and better and better.
Practicing the Art of Problem Framing Yields Good Things, Almost Endlessly
How you choose to view a situation or problem impacts what next steps or solutions you will take. If you choose to view getting passed over for a promotion as a problem, you will likely feel stressed, betrayed, etc. etc. All emotions that, in some doses, can actually lead to productive results. In fact, feeling emotions like frustration is a perfectly healthy part of understanding a problem and understanding yourself (by asking, “Why am I feeling this way?” over and over again).
But then…. Then there is this moment when you need to shift the framing from, “this is a problem. WTF” to… “This is an opportunity … to do something novel… and to show myself that I have grown.”
I’ve experienced this literally every single day of the last 12 weeks. For several reasons, I won’t go into detail about these challenges, but I will tell you that we have overcome every single one, and every single setback or roadblock has made us better.
One day when the market we operate in has matured a little bit, I’ll write about the specific scenarios our team managed through in these early days, but for now I’m going to instead be vague and talk about how to apply this “Opportunity Framing” mindset to something at work.
The next time you feel friction or the fear of failure at work, lean into that fear. Ask yourself why you feel fear, ask yourself what could have or will lead to a better outcome, and then dare to actually do that thing.
Examples:
Instead of blaming your manager for not getting a promotion, ask yourself why you weren’t promoted — “What could I have done differently to change this outcome?” View yourself from a third person perspective, be critical, and then ask yourself, “If achieving this thing meant keeping my job or losing it, how would I go about getting results?”
Spend time on this question and you are likely to uncover something you aren’t doing…and that is the foundation of actually doing something different
In other words, you’re viewing your situation as something in your control, and you are taking control
Instead of saying you “lost the deal because the customer wasn’t willing to pay our pricing premium over this other SaaS product,” dig into what you could have done differently at literally every point
Were you thorough enough on discovery? building relationships? Did you understand the customer’s problem? Did they ascertain the pure power of what you were selling? Did you communicate clearly enough? How was your energy / vibe during your meetings? Assume you have margin for improvement in every category, what do you change?
If you will not quit until you achieve what you want, then you must also not quit at finding out where you need to evolve yourself. Because if you don’t change yourself, you are just waiting on the universe around you to change, and to deliver different results. Sure, that might work over a very long period of time, but it’s highly unlikely to get you the results you want on a faster timeline. (This applies to corporate / company strategy & execution as well)
And time is our most valuable asset. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. “Later” is never guaranteed, so stack these two things together to go achieve whatever it is you want in your life:
I Will Not Quit.
Why Not Now?
Michael
(P.S. Baby boy coming very soon, so probably won’t write again until October :-)).