Entrepreneur Success: A Letting Go Habit That Gets You Growing Faster

Well, this week’s note to you has sent me down a rabbit hole of epic proportions and laughably has brought me back to a moment that illustrates the whole purpose of today’s topic.

I like basing these messages on stories; it gives a nice jumping-off point.  But this morning, I couldn’t find the story.

Hence the rabbit hole begins.  My inspiration for today is the phrase “I Know.”

I learned that the phrase “I know” in business shuts down creativity, innovation, and feedback, getting the business stuck in an infinite looping echo chamber.  The longer you are stuck in the loop, the more ‘right’ you become, and the stronger you lean into what you ‘know.’

Still searching for the illustrative story, I research - where did I learn this tidbit? What research had I consumed that put this idea in my brain?

I’ve got the ghost of a memory whispering “Harvard,” so I log into the Harvard Business Review site and search.  The search reveals “Can Your Employees Really Speak Freely?” by James R. Detert and Ethan Burris.

The article brings up the notion that reflexively answering with ‘I Know’ can come off as a subtle and subconscious power play that shuts down feedback.

This is supported by “What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There,” by Marshall Goldsmith - a book I often quote when discussing the success paradox.  Goldsmith also echos the powerplay that turns into the bottleneck for future success.

You see, success in the past, according to Goldsmith, can create a ‘success illusion’ which makes success in the future more challenging.

Both examples are in the right direction but are not quite right. I head to my library.  I pull out six business books which all have veins of the idea but nothing explicit.

Now I’m enlisting my husband, who is Google searching and throwing out suggested titles.  Ninety minutes from the time I sat down to write, we finally figured out which book had the example I was looking for.

I dig in.  Reading aloud, I share the Carter Racing case study used by the Harvard Business School from the book Range by David Epstein.

The case study comes down to the students needing to make a ‘go-no-go’ decision on race day based on inconclusive data points on previous engine failure.  This decision has much on the line, and the students debate 3 of the 4 possible outcomes.

In short, they are:

1. Go and win;
2. Go and lose;
3. Don’t go and lose

Strangely, no one mentions the fourth potential outcome - Don’t go and win.

The class overwhelmingly votes to ‘Go’ for a multitude of reasons.  The decision that is shared by prior classes - and the decision that inspired the case study. The decision to launch the Challenger mission in 1983.  

The search for what went wrong has produced books, studies, and investigations. Still, perhaps one theory that is most interesting to me is the one where knowledge and logic overrode the concern for launch because there wasn’t data to support the concern.  

It was the case where perhaps the desire to ‘know’ overrode intuition. 

The irony isn’t lost on me. My desire to know sent me down the rabbit hole because I seek to be right in the information I share.  That desire just overrode my inspiration.

Isn’t that entertaining?

What would my inspiration say now?  Simply I would share that it is a balance between the head and the heart when it comes to being successful, profitable, and growing your business.  Some things work that don’t make sense.  Some things make sense that don’t work.

When we get locked into the ‘know,’ we close ourselves off from opportunity, growth, and solutions.  Needing to ‘know’ can also lead to rabbit holes and inaction, which happen far too often.

Need help growing your business faster? Check out ‘How a Positive Attitude Can Grow Your Business Faster.’ 

One of the benefits of using us as an outside set of eyes is that we work hard not to ‘know.’  It would be easy for me to lean into past experiences and assume that your challenges need the same solutions as others who have faced similar challenges.  

Instead, we strive to ask questions, poke into assumptions, overturn the things left unsaid, and anticipate the questions behind the questions.  I’ll admit that it’s a bit like deciphering a treasure map to find the hidden gold. Time after time, the methods we use find the gold.

When our clients can drop the hubris of knowing, we can partner to create and transform their business from profit-leaking into a well-oiled machine. Want to know more? Find time on my schedule to chat.