One of the weirder experiences most of us can relate to is being in a meeting where nearly all of the participants disagree with the decision being made, but the power dynamics keep anyone in the room from objecting. It’s never a great feeling, and it seems to happen for a few different reasons
I'm not one to extol the virtues of failure. I get annoyed whenever people talk about “celebrating failure.” That said, there are some benefits to getting your ass handed to you every once in a blue moon.
Investing time, money and energy into a strategy, only to have the market not respond is like taking a punch. You might not get knocked out, but the effect of multiple blows can take a toll on your confidence and enthusiasm.
I nearly scrapped this column, because they’re not bad ideas per se. Both are still in fashion today, especially in the startup-o-sphere, and like many popular ideas there's more than a grain of truth to them. But these two ideas have run themselves ragged, and I see them doing more harm than good when I encounter them.
There are several benefits to focusing on smaller-scale problems challenges that you can get your arms around. First, there are bound to be many smaller-scale yet still important problems crying out for attention that you can make actually progress against on your own. It’s helpful to not need to rely on too many other people for your pet projects that you might be working on at irregular intervals. Such projects are great for racking up wins and building career momentum early...
It may as well be a natural law that leadership teams always want to do more things than the organization actually can at any given time. That perpetual gap between the company’s ambition and its capacity might seem like a frustration, and it can be, but it also turns out to be the source of numerous opportunities to own something valuable early on. All it takes is identifying things that your company, division, or team want to try but don’t have time to spin up...
