Category Archives: Business

What is an entrepreneur’s most important skill?

I read recently that an entrepreneur’s most important skill was his or her ability to execute. Upon reading that, I immediately thought of all the exceptional entrepreneurs I know who (if left alone) couldn’t execute their way out of a paper bag.

Those entrepreneurs have different skills that seem to serve them well. Their most important one may be their ability to surround themselves with and motivate a group of people who can execute.

I like how Martin Luther King, Jr. put it:

If you want to move people it has to be toward a vision that’s positive for them. One that taps important values, that gets them something they desire. And it has to be presented in a compelling way that people feel inspired to follow.

The 4WD Effect

I’m currently driving my third AMC-era Jeep and my fifth four-wheel-drive vehicle. I am not a lumberjack or a farmer. I have worked in construction and real estate development, though 4WD was never necessary for my job.

If anything, 4WD is (at least for me) more of a liability than an asset. It’s certainly more expensive to maintain. Mileage is horrible as well; My 1984 Jeep CJ-8 Scrambler gets 11 miles to the gallon.

But the biggest problem with 4WD is a hidden problem: 4WD fosters foolishness, rashness, negligence, and overconfidence. It beckons you to disregard normal limits. It allows you to go so deep into the woods that when you get stuck (and you will inevitably get stuck), you’re well beyond help.

Seems to me like a lot of technologies, when abused, have this same sort of consequence. I don’t think there’s a name for this, so I’m giving it one: The 4WD Effect. The 4WD Effect occurs when overuse of or over-reliance on a technology causes the very problem that the technology was designed to solve.

4WD exists to help people avoid getting stuck. A negligent driver, lulled into confidence by his Jeep’s abilities, finds himself stuck so far back in the woods that no tow truck can reach him.

High resolution digital photography exists to help people preserve moments. A casual photographer seeks to preserve so many 4MB moments on her computer (few of which she had any intention of ever printing at their maximum resolution) that the machine inevitably and suddenly crashes, destroying all the memories she was trying to save.

Navigation systems exist to help people find their way. After months of use, I lose the ability to find my way around without my phone, stop carrying an old-school printed map, and when I find myself unexpectedly out of cell range, I become lost.

How does one avoid becoming a victim of the 4WD Effect? Humility seems like the only meaningful hedge.

“We should never have 100% client satisfaction”

A friend forwarded me this great article from Jesse Lipson at Forbes, applying Taleb’s concept of antifragility to business. The author encourages entrepreneurs to cultivate a work environment where people will “embrace volatility,” “fail frequently in small ways,” and “build back even stronger.”

“So in Antifragile,” writes Lipson,

Taleb suggests we stop trying to predict the future and focus on protecting against something that we can more easily measure: fragility. Something is fragile if it breaks with small changes in the environment: a wine glass shatters if you drop it; it’s fragile. If an object or system can withstand large changes, it’s resilient. A system is antifragile if it actually thrives on chaos, growing stronger when the unexpected occurs.

It’s like weightlifting: Your company is antifragile when it’s composed of more muscle than bone. Yes, bones can recover from a break, but often in a weakened state. A muscle is strengthened by damage. Weightlifters build muscle by pushing it past the limit. A stressed muscle is riven with tiny tears and, as the muscle repairs itself, it actually rebuilds stronger and bigger than before.

This morning, I forwarded the article along to some other entrepreneurs, and one responded thusly (I paraphrase):

Thinking about this, we should never have 100% client satisfaction. We should be doing little experiments all the time, and experiencing little failures here and there, with the result being that a small percentage of clients isn’t happy. If we don’t do that, none of our clients will ever be ecstatic.

I love that observation, even as someone who makes a living monitoring customer satisfaction. If 100% of our clients will recommend us, then we’re never failing to meet expectations, and that suggests we’re not taking enough small risks to keep driving our business forward in an enduring (and antifragile) way.