Why common sense is not so common among founders

Some years ago, two college kids posted online photos of themselves smoking weed in their dorm room. The next day, when they realized what they’d done, one of the guys observed, “I wish we could retract those photos.” The result was Snapchat, a $50-billion company. Their pain, amplified by empathy, shaped the Snapchat concept.

I’d suggest that nearly every startup has one thing in common. They’re born on empathy, stemming from the founder’s solution to his or her frustrations, dreams, fears, and wishes.

Empathy is the ability to place oneself in the customer’s shoes. Or, to state it another way: to treat consumers and fellow employees as you would want to be treated. When empathy takes off, you’ll witness a small army of true believers join forces and march day-and-night until they’ve broken through their organisation’s red tape and ‘we’ve always done it that way’ mindset.

Lack of empathy paralyses the giants of every industry – yet in a David and Goliath scenario, a relatively small number of empathetic strivers can do wonders to reinvigorate an unstoppable, powerful entrepreneurial spirit, admired by every corporation out there.

So how come, if the entrepreneurial spirit is so desired, it almost always disappears?

I’ve studied and worked with hundreds of companies around the world, from Googles and LEGOs, to tiny over-night-wonder start-ups like Hitwise.com and YellowPages.com, to promising start-ups that never really took off. I’ve observed what happens as companies grow and how that entrepreneurial spirit gets lost in translation. In almost every case, the answer boils down to three simple words: Loss of empathy.

And, dear entrepreneur, these three simple words can indeed be your road to success or failure. What I’ve come to realize is that common sense depends on empathy – and the lack of empathy leads straight to a lack of common sense. The better an organisation is at weaving empathy into its narrative and culture, the more prominent common sense will be in its operations, internal culture, and external relationships.

Let me share an example. Some time ago, a client of mine, leader of one of the largest pharma companies in the world and the number-one player in the respiratory-andasthma field, asked me to help ‘repair the company-patient relationship’. I asked this company’s execs, ‘When did you last spend time with patients?’ Their answer was: ‘Never.’ They had all kinds of excuses, mostly relating to compliance and regulation. I said, ‘That’s BS.’ For the first time in this company’s hundred-year history, we went to talk to patients.

One of their patients, a young woman, told us how she feels excluded from her tribe, disconnected, embarrassed about having asthma. I asked her, ‘How do you get around this?’ She dug down in her handbag for a simple soda straw. ‘I ask other people to hold their noses and breathe through the straw. I tell them, that’s what living with asthma is like.’ That was a really clever idea, I thought, so I passed out straws to senior management, turned off the lights, and had everyone breathe through their straw and listen to the sounds of everyone else gasping for breath. Half the senior managers lasted less than 30 seconds. They said, ‘This is ridiculous, I can’t breathe this way.’

I said, ‘That’s exactly how your patients breathe every minute of their entire life.’ For the first time, they experienced real empathy for their customers. They redesigned R&D. They changed the way they communicated with consumers. In fact, the entire organisation was redesigned. Today, when new staff join the company, they receive ‘empathy kits’. What’s truly fascinating is how the increase in empathy increased the company’s level of common sense.

As start-ups grow, they begin seeking to protect themselves from danger, they set up legal functions, they install compliance, they establish systems to streamline processes. As all this bureaucracy flourishes, the company’s nimbleness fades away. The perspective changes from ‘outside in’ to ‘inside out’. The company begins to believe in its own magic. The customer’s perspective vanishes. The entrepreneur loses touch with reality.

What does it take to circumvent this disturbing, life-threatening evolution?

Reintroduce empathy into the heart of your organisation. Share with every member of your staff what you felt when you got the idea for the company. When you onboard new staff, have them spend time with customers – in their homes, at their workplaces, while shopping – and let them see and experience the world through their eyes. Then let those experiences define their work within your company. Encourage them to always place the customer at the very centre of everything.

Here’s the core issue. Common sense is common among founders. It’s your very lifeblood. It’s why you created your company.

But don’t make the baseless assumption that it will remain forever. Empathy and common sense don’t happen without constant nurturing.

It’s common sense, isn’t it? But the sad reality is that common sense isn’t actually all that common.

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