Cheap Revolution

On Trust: Astronauts don't launch their own rockets

 Years ago, I wrote this piece to illustrate the importance of trusting others while building an organization. Sometimes your own self-importance gets in the way of growing a thriving business.

If you want to find other ideas like this, check out the Startup Advice page at Team and a Dream.

- Skip

Thousands of years ago, people could only get around on foot. They could cover maybe 15-20 miles with a good dirt road.

Horses came and enabled people to cover 20-100 miles per day.

Then some serious stuff arrived:

Boats. Out on the ocean. Cruising 24x7, non-stop to the destination. People might cover 200 miles or more a day.

Trains arrived. Moving faster now.

Automobiles. Faster still –and introduces the ability to go to more places.

Airplanes – really taking travel by storm. A jet can circle the world in a day.

But who has the prime seat? The championship ring? Who is the blue-ribbon prize-winner of travel?

The astronaut.

So let’s look at what the astronaut does.

This little guy or gal stands next to a structure nearly 20 stories tall. They climb into a little cockpit and strap tightly into a seat in the nose of this structure, with 2000 tons of liquid fuel at their back.… surrounded by hundreds of specialists, radar tracking systems, communication systems, guidance systems, life support systems, computing systems, systems to monitor the systems.

An engineer flips a switch...

And in 3 days…

This person can travel to the moon.

No other traveler can touch that.

What is the lesson of the astronaut?

The Astronaut gives up total control – and through complete trust in the people and instruments that have been put in place by them, the Astronaut accomplishes a milestone that literally moves mankind out of this world.

Through that trust, that total loss of control, the Astronaut becomes the most powerful traveler that has every lived.

Description:

The key to the Astronaut remedy is found through favoring trust over fear in your decision-making processes. Fear drives a scarcity mentality, which causes team members to hunker down, preparing for the worst. Trust enables a creative mastery of situations, allowing for growth and expansion.

Entrepreneurs would do well to master the Astronaut’s control through influence. By expanding one’s influence, they also expand their sphere of indirect control. By giving up direct control in favor of influence or indirect control, an individual can create a multiplier effect on their intentions. Multipliers translate into higher productivity, greater sales and a multitude of other important business results.

It is akin to asking the question:

“Would you rather have a smaller slice of an enormous pie, or own the whole pie that is tiny?” To illustrate the point, a one percent share of Microsoft today is worth over $2.5 Billion.

An entrepreneur can control:
1) what they give up,
2) to whom and
3) when.

This remedy requires careful consideration of the three factors outlined above.

1) What they give up. You should always perform to your strengths. If you have a strength, but lack experience, then bring on a mentor. If you have a blind-spot in an area, then fill it with an experienced and skilled person. Sweet Spot analysis can help with deciding what you should give up. Its okay to want to communicate and be informed, but don’t stifle your opportunity to grow by trying to have it both ways. Once you’ve given responsibility to someone else, you must give them the leeway they need to do their job. Otherwise, you never really gave it up.

2) to Whom. Since trust is a key enabler of this remedy, the people you turn your keys over to must be trust-worthy. Are they predictable in their behaviors? Do they operate with integrity? If you can’t answer these questions, then you probably need more time operating with them before turning over major responsibilities. Cultivate a network of people you can trust. You never know when you’ll need to tap them to step up a level.

3) When. Often, the time to release and trust is when it is most frightening. This is because your business may have reached a crisis point. You are faced with a dilemma that ultimately stems from your growth, or lack of growth, and must make a hard choice. Free yourself by giving up something and use the new-found time to go deeper and wider in the areas you maintain for yourself.

Examples of the Astronaut include:

Entrepreneurs who share generous amounts of equity with team members

Entrepreneurs who bring in an expert CEO to run their company

Senior Managers who delegate responsibility broadly and decisively

The Astronaut pattern description provides a table of Scarcity vs. Abundance theory as well as some additional details about this piece of startup advice.

 

Spirit and Business

Does a discussion of Spirit belong in the business world?

After all, business is about making money. Right?

Wrong.

Business is about making meaning. Read what Guy Kawasaki says in The Art of the Start about the story of Arthur Rock, builder and investor ofworld class companies like Intel, Fairchild Semiconductor and Apple.

"If you want to get an investment, show that you will build a business. Make meaning. Make a difference. Don't do it for the money. Do it because you want to make the world a better place. This applies to the geekiest of technology startups as well as to low-tech, no-tech, and not-for-profit organizations."

Guy also tells us that "Meaning is not about power, money or prestige."

This past summer I read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. Ms. Rand has powerful ideas about the culture of money and the way our business world should work (her philosophy of objectivism). She writes about "motive power", of men and women "moving in a straight line" with un-deterred vision. She talks about the beauty of capitalism. In its purest form, it encourages the greatest measureable value as efficiently as possible.

While Ayn Rand stands as a free-market icon for many of our world's business people, her message has a dark side that flies in the face of spirit. One of the heros in Atlas Shrugged tells us that we should never give something to someone that they didn't earn, not even a smile!

Not even a smile?!

Many of us have been in work environments where smiles are as rare as flying pigs. These environments often make us feel like faceless automatons cranking away like a cog in some giant mechanism. That mechanism seems like it was designed to crank out dollars into the pockets of an elite few whom we rarely see and never communicate with.

How many risks will workers take in such environments to create a better workplace? How often do you see courage? How many of these workers eye's shine with passion and meaning?

Zero. Never. None.

On the flip side, I've had the heart-warming pleasure to work in an environment that was spiritually charged or as one former colleague called it, "the most humane place I've ever worked". That company was called "Destiny" and it made meaning for the people who worked there.

Destiny flourished for nine years before its marketplace in eCommerce evaporated after the dot com crash.

Consider the following:

• Most hard client decisions were resolved with the mantra, "Do the right thing."
• The first software Destiny built was mostly created by the genius of a fresh college graduate who was given an opportunity - and that software powered one of the world's first online banking systems for Bank of America
• A woman who brashly told the founder (me) that he needed a CEO was invited to become that CEO - and she quickly grew to be one of the best in the region
• The hardest working, most productive employees were also the most outspoken critics in the public, weekly company meetings
• On the sad day when layoffs came, a laid-off manager pulled the founder aside and thanked him for the most worthwhile work experience of his career
• When the company decided to finally close its doors in late 2002, all of the former employees and contractors were invited to join in a celebration of the Destiny experience and over 100 people came to celebrate what had gone before

In my posting on retaining IT Talent, I reveal some of the secrets that I believe helped make Destiny a success of business and Spirit.

The short story is that people want to be connected. They need to see the vision, understand the mission, know and trust their colleagues and connect to their work as a meaningful part of something bigger than themselves.

There is nothing better to motivate a person than giving them a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" (BHAG's are discussed by author Jim Collins in "Good to Great") along with plenty of latitude to make it a reality. Nothing unleashes the human spirit more than when they believe that they are making a change for the better.

However, working for a great cause is not sufficient. People need to feel that they have the ability to connect to that cause. They need to understand how their work impacts the outcome. They need to be listened to. Once those needs are met, then the BHAGs can move mountains.

So next time you feel like holing up in your office, get out and connect to your neighbors... learn a bit more about your companies mission -and ask some good questions.

Connecting isn't just good for you, its a spiritual practice that will improve your workplace.