What Goes Into Creating An Amazing Company: Balance (9/9)

Over the years, I have developed a working model of what goes behind creating an amazing company. As I look to build my 3rd venture - ithinkyouare - the world's 'compliment' app - I thought this might be a good opportunity to publish these ideas

In case these strike a chord with you, or you think of someone with whom they will - the misfits, the rebels, the round pegs in square holes - I am also building the initial team of pirates for ithinkyouare - so do get in touch with me

Why I Was Reluctant To Write This Article Series

Writing this series of articles on 'What Goes Into Creating An Amazing Company' has actually been a break of character for me

I am generally unkeen to present my views in such a 'rules for something' format, especially in written word

Why? Because I don't think life's rules are so certain, so black-and-white

And often, the opposite of what's true is also true

So I made a deal with myself - I would keep the last, 9th part of the series to break down how the opposite of the first 8 parts can also be true

The right way, therefore, in my view, to look at the first 8 parts is to look at them as 'guidelines' not rules

They are usually true, yes (in my opinion, which is why I wrote the first 8 parts)

But in the final scheme of things, always apply your own intelligence to things, and 'break' the rules when necessary

Pablo Picasso said: "Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist"

Be an artist

The Duality Of Life (Or Why The Exact Opposite Of What You Think Is True, Is Also True)

One of the common threads in the world's philosophical systems that has always fascinated me is about the duality of life. How seemingly opposite forces (day and night, masculine and feminine, creativity and structure) are both sides of the same coin, only exist because the other exists, and are both equally important

I have often observed that when one is immature, there is a tendency to think of one side as good, and the other as evil

That's just the ignorance of not getting the full picture. Of judging, instead of understanding

Maturity is when you can look at both (seemingly opposite) sides and see the truth in each, the value in each, the importance of each

And when you realize that, when you find balance, magic happens

The Opposite Of The First 8 Rules Of 'What Goes Into Creating An Amazing Company'

Let's break down examples of where the opposite of the first 8 rules, may actually be at least partially true:

Being User-Centric: Yes, it's important to build for the end user, but users don't always know what's best for them. You could make the best cigarettes in the world, and you would be serving a big set of users, but are you adding something positive to the world? That's a question for you to examine

Getting Together A-Grade Folk: Finding great people is not a trivial thing at all. If you keep waiting it out to find a great team before getting started, is that the best path to creating something great eventually? Would it not be energy/enthusiasm draining to keep waiting for a perfect team, instead of going with pretty good and then improvising from there?

Creating A Great Culture: Culture is super-important, and one aspect of a great culture is to treat your teammates like family, but what if one of them is consistently missing the mark? Is it ok to fire a family member? If you don't, doesn't it then affect everyone else's morale, since one of them is clearly not meeting mutually-set standards? Isn't it net-net better then for the organization to let them go?

Thinking Independently: I hinted at this in the article itself, but this deserves being restated - being contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian is as foolish as being trapped in groupthink. Before deciding on your radical new approach, have you thought about why the current standard approach became the standard? Why it has stood the test of time? What was the logic behind it? Why it works quite well? If you have not thought about these things, perhaps a little more introspection is in order

Thinking Long-Term: As we discussed in that article, thinking long-term is a proven predictor of long-term success. But it's not quite as simple as that. To maintain their enthusiasm and morale, especially for long-gestation-period projects, humans also need the joy of meeting smaller, more short-term milestones. Otherwise, if your morale is constantly depleted, you might not have the strength to stick around for your long-term goals

NOT Competing: Yes, it's a good idea to pick new race tracks, instead of competing on ones where you start 2 laps behind, but eventually, the competition will come even on the new race track. The better way to think about this is to keep your end-user (and humanity) at the center of what you want to do, instead of the competition

Building A Moat: For long-term success, moats are very important. But is it always possible to build a moat when you are starting off? In the beginning, shouldn't the top priority simply be to produce something valuable for people? And then iterate from there?

And even if you do end up making what looks like a strong moat, does that make you immune to eventual death? Ask Nokia. They completely dominated the smartphone market before iPhone and Android came into the picture

Finding Your IKIGAI: Is finding Ikigai always such a linear thing? Is it as simple as 1. you figure it out, and 2. you align your life to it, and 3. you succeed?

Not quite

Like Jobs said 'The dots usually connect backwards'

You will often be unsure about these things, but as long as you trust your intuition, some (Ikigai) path will emerge

Ikigai then is not so much 'found', but 'emerges eventually' as you keep doing what feels right

What Does Balance Feel Like (It's Like Riding A Bicycle)

If the exact opposite of what looks true, is also true, how do you find the right balance between these 2 truths? How do you arrive at a higher truth, that combines both these truths? That acknowledges the value in both of them?

In other words, what does Balance feel like?

I think the right analogy is how we ride a bicycle. If you were to capture yourself cycling on a video and then play it in super slow motion, you would realize that even when we are riding the cycle smoothly, it's NOT in balance

More accurately, it's not in STATIC balance. Which is to say that, it's virtually never perfectly balanced (straight)

Instead, you will find that what's happening is that your body swerves towards one side and then you quickly (subconsciously) compensate for it by swerving a bit on the other side. But before you start falling, your body again compensates and you swerve on the other side. And so on

You are not in a static balance

Instead, you are in what's actually the natural form of all balances in life - DYNAMIC balance

You are constantly adjusting

That's how balance is achieved in real life. By not overcommitting to any one extreme, and instead balancing it out with its opposite when required

You should feel the tension (the pull) from both sides. You should see the sense in both points of view. And then make decisions at the appropriate balance. And then, finally, keep adjusting

The corollary is also true - if you completely buy into one sort of worldview on anything - if you are completely committed to one kind of ism - if you can't see the truth of the other side - you have lost balance, and you would perhaps do well to zoom out enough, and try to see the full picture

In fact, this is something I consider one of the highest indicators of intelligence - being able to hold 2 opposing thoughts in your brain at the same time, and giving appropriate value to each - so that the best decisions can be taken (and improvised on)

Let's take an example. You want to get fitter in life. So you commit yourself to an exercise schedule. Great

Doing it for half an hour every day is fantastic. If you are already quite unfit, you might want to even do 1 hour a day

What about 6 hours a day? Does that get you even fitter? Of course

But earmarking 1/4th of your life for physical exercise to make the remaining 3/4th a bit better? Probably not a good deal, in balance

Because there are many other factors that go into creating a good quality of life that you will be ignoring at the cost of overcommitting to exercise

(Of course, if you want to be an athlete, then maybe it does make sense - the right balance is always relative to the person concerned)

You get the idea - always look at the big picture, consider all sides of the equation - and try to get a feel for the right balance for you (and keep improvising, keep learning)

The right balance is usually eventually realized, not suddenly discovered

How To Encourage Balance In Your Organization

There are a few things that you can do to encourage balance in your organization:

Change the focus to finding higher truths: In team meetings/discussions, try to iterate to higher truths, considering all kinds of views (in proportion to their common-sense-value)

Be humble, keep learning: Someone wise once said, you might be the smartest person in the world, but the scale-of-what-you-dont-know is always infinitely larger than the scale-of-what-you-do-know. Remain humble, keep learning good things from everyone, and encourage everyone in your team to do the same

Avoid too much self-labeling: Don't overcommit to the rulebook, and isms. Keep your options open to taking 95% from one rulebook, but 5% from another opposite rulebook. Your common sense should be the ultimate filter, not a set of predefined rules. Encourage the same approach in your team

That's It Folks!

Finding a good balance is I think the hardest, most nuanced of the 9 parts of Creating An Amazing Company. It's also (not coincidentally) the hardest part of Being An Amazing Human Being

But if you can keep yourself humble, and keep learning from everyone you cross paths with, the sky is your limit

Good luck!