Launch Leadership
Who? Me?
Last May, I was honored to be invited to speak to the international leadership class at UTNY (the University of Texas at Austin campus in midtown Manhattan). While I’m always looking for any excuse to pontificate, especially in front of those gullible students (not!), my first reaction on receiving the invitation was, "Me? What an odd choice!"
I’ve never thought of myself as an expert in leadership. Many of the things I’ve done have involved relatively small groups of people, often running for our lives and figuring out how we were going to do whatever it was we’d set out to do, while running to keep up: with each other, with our ideas, with the execution of those ideas. Leadership might not be the word I would use to describe my role in all of that. It’s more like managing the unmanageable, zigging the zag, crossing the road before the chickens figure out "why".
Like many of you, I’ve read some great books on leadership and management. Leadership typically involves directing armies of people (perhaps even actual armies) to accomplish Big Things, which will no doubt lead to Glory and Prestige for all, especially those at the top: the "leaders", who are indispensable and all-knowing. Organisational leadership. That's what I assumed the good folks at UTNY wanted me to speak about, and that's what I know next to nothing about. Like I mused to myself, "Ray Brimble? What an odd choice!"
But they had already invited me. At 11 a.m. on a too-imminent Tuesday, an entire lecture room would be filled with people, all expecting that I would have something to say about "leadership". Plus, I’d already purchased my ticket to New York, even if my arrival was somewhat doubtful given that my plane was scheduled to land at Newark. (What kind of thought leader books a trip to New York through Newark these days, given their infamous air traffic control issues?)
I was clearly backed into a corner. THE corner. You know, that metaphorical place high in the clouds where I’ve set up a cozy little office, where I do some of my best thinking. With my back up against the wall in THE corner, I hemmed and I hawed, because that's how you get the creative juices flowing, and finally came up with an "angle". It’s best to lead with angles when you don't have anything—or anyone—else to lead. So, my friends, here's my angle, and I'm sticking to it. I hope you’re buying what I'm selling!
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Leaders
Organizational leadership? Not needed in THE (corner) room. Launching your way out of THE room, and down the street and across the road (before the chickens get there first)? Now THAT is something that I know a little something about. Fancy business parlance might call this launch, start-up or early-stage enterprise leadership. I'll go with that.
I have been there and done that more than 50 times if you count just the businesses I have started, grown, occasionally run into the ground; and on other occasions successfully sold, merged, or otherwise marked up as "wins". Yes, I realize that even startups and early stage companies have teams of people (sometimes teams of one), trying to transform a concept into a concrete business. But whether you are a launch team of one, or dozens, the leadership principles of startups and early stage enterprises can be different from the management of more firmly established organizations.
What kind of launches? Are we just talking about starting businesses here? Yes, no and maybe. The observations I will share with you could apply to a wide variety of human endeavors. The launch of a new business. Or perhaps founding a new non-profit. Maybe it's about forming small groups for class projects, or even getting married and starting a new family. Anything new. I call all of these things enterprises, despite it sounding like everything is a big bad business. It doesn't have to be. To my mind, anything worthy of launching and nurturing can be considered an "enterprise".
Here's my central premise: New launch, start-up and early stage leadership looks and feels different, because the experience of beginning something both has and also does not have shared leadership attributes, with larger organizational enterprises. What follows are my "haves" and "have nots".
To Have and Have Not
Haves
Unusually strong conviction and dedication. New launches usually begin with great enthusiasm.
Absorption of new ideas and innovation. Starting with a clean slate has its advantages. Less inertia of established ideas, for one. In fact, the number one reason folks usually start enterprises is to have the opportunity to do things differently.
Vision. You know where you want to go, until where you thought you were going ends up being someplace else.
Which leads to....
Mission creep! Startups often boil the ocean, want to be everything to everybody, chase the next shiny object (... squirrel!) Have I forgotten any other good cliches? Staying on track is harder than it looks.
Over-confidence. Launches and early stages are really hard. Virtually everyone starts overly confident at first, and ends up under confident during the middle stages.
USPs (Unique Sales Propositions) It's weird to discover that someone else is pushing a similar, and perhaps even better, idea. All new enterprises start by thinking they are totally unique. Usually they are not.
Wealth and fame. You’ve heard the statistic that only 1 in 10 businesses succeed? That may be optimistic. Early-stage projects may indeed be powered by the promise of wealth and fame, but most of us soon discover that our enterprise is big on promise, but just a little short on cash.
Innocence. An absolute requirement to launch and sustain any enterprise. Because if you knew what you don't actually know, you would never launch in the first place. Be grateful for your innocence. It's the face that launches a thousand ships.
Have Nots
Size. Startups are, almost by definition, small. Small tends to be more nimble. Small can grow more rapidly. Small is also often ignored. Be prepared to be overlooked, underrated, and generally frowned upon, just for being little.
Structure. The structure you define in your business plan almost never survives reality.
Abundance (of money or of other things). I promise this: you will never have as much as you want, of whatever you believe is required. Get over it. Keep moving. That's early stage leadership.
Lots of people to manage. Everyone on board needs to be like that guy, Jack. Quick, nimble, able to do just about all trades, and even occasionally jump over a candle stick. Leaders are the people who jump, rather than hold the candle stick for others.
Pre-established, enforced lines of communication. The best early-stage enterprises are the ones where everyone can talk to everybody, just about all the time. That's just my own opinion. If you don't like it, feel free to register your complaint with my assistant.
Well-defined strategies. Actually, you can waste a ton of time at first, honing the best-looking strategy there ever was. But it will still have to change, and it may even morph into something completely unrecognizable when compared to the launch version. Possibly, far better!
Mission and vision statements which anybody bothers to refer to. See the comments on "well defined strategies", above.
Don’t know what you don’t know (and don't appreciate what you do know). See comments on "innocence", above.
Good will. Here's the cruel truth. Most folks will wish you well, but have very little vested interest in your success. Authentic good will usually comes with time and history, which is the product of vested mutual self-interests. Start with little and hopefully exit with a lot. Job well done and life well lived, if it ends up like that.
Adequate time to plan and launch. Similar to money. You will never have enough of any of this. Learn to lead without it.
Anyplace to soft land, if a landing is required. The most difficult form of true leadership is finding places to land without crashing and burning. Early-stage involves lots of soft landings, to preserve the enterprise so that other launches can occur. Launch and early-stage is about bouncing from this to that. Lead as if you are all in one of those bouncy houses. Soft landings can be fun!
Forces of Gravity
These Haves and Have Nots are all gravities. Not unique to early-stage, but much stronger there. The leadership and management of launch and early-stage enterprises requires the skill and temperament required to meet the force of the demands of each of these gravities, and whatever other gravities might be pulling on your gravitas at the same time.
Another way to look at it is to imagine that the enterprises you launch will travel through various dimensions, each with their own mood, sensibilities, and leadership. I address five of these dimensions in my essay, "The Difficult We Do Immediately, The Impossible Takes a Little Longer". In this essay, I shamelessly borrow Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s Five Stages of Grief (denial, anger, depression, bargaining, and acceptance), as a road map for something similar that happens when you launch and grow enterprise.
Here's how I lay out my five stages which, unlike Kübler-Ross’s, are not a pathway to accepting loss, but rather a roadmap to finding success.
Stage One: This Looks Really Hard. This is how we all start; with the acknowledgement of the enormity of the task, but with confidence we can overcome obstacles.
Stage Two: What the Hell Have I Gotten Into? The realization that you are in over your head.
Stage Three: Futility. Swimming in the sea of doubt, but somehow not drowning.
Stage Four: Help Me, Lord. Akin to Kübler-Ross’s "bargaining" stage, this is where we come to understand that the enterprise has a life of its own and will make or break, in spite of you as much as because of you.
Stage Five: What Just Happened? The acceptance stage, also known as coming to terms with making it or breaking it.
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Roadmaps
These stages are not milestones or roadmaps. They’re more like affirmations or messages from the ether of each dimensional stage. They do not instruct, but they do inform, with the guidance of prevailing sentiments, which can be helpful and even strangely comforting for you and your team as you make your way. It all feels as far from a business plan as it can be. It's more of a leadership plan, even if you’re a team of one. As a leader, imagine yourself as a Sherpa. Someone who knows the path up the mountain because you have climbed it before. I imagine that some main attributes of a Sherpa might not be just their knowledge of the path, but also their ability to adapt to real-time conditions and to lead with confidence, even when scared and unsure.
The path of launch and early-stage enterprises is often rocky, slippery, and frightening. The view from the trail often looks like a deadly drop off. One wrong step and you are done. Launch Sherpas do not have the luxury of showing fear, and it is essential that they practice restraint, empathy, stamina, and perhaps even a bit of good humor, particularly when the going gets even tougher.
Hope, Above All
Finally, let me add one more absolutely essential element of leadership, whether it be a small startup, or a large organization enterprise. It's HOPE.
Poet, dissident and former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel put it this way:
"Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart."
Success, in virtually all forms of human activity, depends on leaders with a certain orientation of the spirit and heart. One which allows the team and the enterprise to move through difficulties and past expectations, in the direction of real achievement. The best thing you can cultivate in yourself, as a leader, is the ability to authentically adopt and project hope in whatever you do. Your team will see it, rely on it, and be motivated to adopt the same orientation. As Havel says, this does not predict success, but certainly increases the odds of succeeding. And no matter what the final outcome, you might find that an orientation of a hopeful spirit is a good way to live, and to be, even as a cynical world revolves around us. What I hope for you all, is hope itself.