4 Ways to Use Uncertainty to Free Your Mind and Help Your Startup
Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash
When admitting that you don’t have the answer (yet) is the best thing a founder can do for a business.
I meet a lot of founders who feel like they have to have all the answers. Especially those who have established a bit of track record and are growing. Maybe they have a bank loan and are pulling a million dollars a month in sales. With 20 to 40 employees, they are beginning to look like a real company, for gosh sake, complete with specialists in marketing, finance, HR and sales.
But maybe all the things you did to get to where you are have stopped working so smoothly as before. Maybe you’re feeling the pressure of having all those employees who depend on the salaries your company provides every other Friday. As each new quarter rolls around and finds the plans you put in place and assumptions you made at the beginning of year wanting, you feel pressure to find the answer that will turn things around as only you can!
I’m working with one founder who went all in on a very specific kind of marketing approach the founder believed would solve all the company’s problems. It has failed to do so. (I won’t mention the approach or the company. The approach isn’t the “problem.” All approaches will fail under certain circumstances.)
The point is that the best laid plans as a small company often fail. So what I see is founders struggling to have the answer and putting so much pressure on themselves to have the answer that sometimes they get in the way.
But what I want to suggest here is that you don’t have to have a plan at all times. Sometimes, you need to not have a plan. Let’s do a little exercise. It’s actually a physical exercise. Picture me now: I am standing with my feet spread shoulder length and knees slightly bent. I am holding my hands together as in prayer, but I’m not praying. My right hand begins to apply pressure to my left hand, which returns the pressure until I find myself standing there working against myself.
A state of perfect balance? Not from where I’m standing.
To the contrary, the founder is the right hand pushing on his company, and the left hand is the company or market or universe pushing back. Now, as a founder, you might interpret this returned pressure as push back or disloyalty or stupidity. But what if, instead, you saw it as the world trying to teach you something? With this in mind, I want you to visualize the right hand kind of relaxing, but instead of the left hand pushing the right hand over and “winning the struggle,” the left hand, too, relaxes in equal force so that instead of constant pressure you feel . . . room to breathe.
This is called “liminal space,” which Richard Rohr (Franciscan Friar) described as the psychic place where:
“We are betwixt and between the familiar and the completely unknown. There alone is our old world left behind, while we are not yet sure of the new existence. That’s a good space where genuine newness can begin. Get there often and stay as long as you can by whatever means possible…This is the sacred space where the old world is able to fall apart, and a bigger world is revealed. If we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy.”
What we need most when we feel trapped by pressure is not always more strength to fight back or resist. We need to keep breathing, finding that headspace where you can be more creative. In conscious leadership terms, we refer to this space as “above the line,” a space in which you are curious and hold onto things more lightly. It’s a place where you don’t have the answers to everything and can be okay with it. Better still, within this space you will be freer to find the answer more quickly than you could when you were under pressure.
So how might you achieve this state? Here are several ways I can think of right off the bat:
1. One way is just to allow the uncertainty and notice it. When you notice that you’re uncertain, you can quickly do this exercise or even take a simple, long breath, and tell yourself to accept it.
2. Another way is to go away and think. Tell your employees you’re going to take some time to think about the problem. Don’t put pressure on yourself to think but do something that gives you energy, whether it’s surfing or reading a book or walking in nature. Whatever gives you energy, allowing you to release the problem into the thin air of nature.
3. The third thing you might consider is journaling. Write everything on your mind, and if there’s nothing on your mind — i.e., no solutions — accept that state of consciousness and take a breath of appreciation for the fact that you don’t have the answer.
4. Consider the very real likelihood that you’re not the only one who has faced this problem. Realize that what you might need right now is a mentor or advisor who can appreciate where you are, one who makes you feel free to have the problem because now it’s no longer yours to bear alone. At times like these, the space you and your trusted advisor inhabit is the essence of liminal freedom and creativity.
I know these truths because I have been both the pressured founder/leader and the release valve mentor/coach. And do you know what, the most amazing thing is that achieving liminality can be incredibly exciting because it frees you from the real culprit, which is fear. And with fear gone, anything is possible.
Let me know what you are doing to create your new space for creativity and above the line thinking at your change-the-world company!
Sincerely,
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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!