ENTREPRENEURS TOP COMMON MISTAKES (2) - Going blind because of your own dreams

I am particularly interested in this common mistake because, somehow, it requires a more detailed explanation than others.

If you have an idea that you feel passionate about, you sell it everywhere to everybody, you put together a great team, you are creative and adaptable, and you persevere in your path until you achieve your goal… It seems that there is no way you can fail…Yet, most of the startups fail. This is the REALITY.

I recently revisited the well-known book “Good to Great” by Jim Collins. In this book Mr. Collins presents the critical concepts which differentiate “good” from “great” companies. One of the concepts used in his book is totally applicable to our analysis:

“You always have to confront the brutal facts”

This doesn’t mean that you should lose faith, but YOU CANNOT LOSE SIGHT OF REALITY. Any entrepreneur should embrace what Mr. Collins come to call in his book the Stockdale Paradox:

“you must maintain unwavering faith that you can and you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time, have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be”

In some cases, regardless of the entrepreneurs’ effort and dedication the project cannot be successful. There are many external factors that cannot be controlled: political or economic abrupt crisis; deep changes in regulation; even natural disasters. They may create new obstacles never considered before. In these circumstances, the entrepreneur has to be able to confront the facts, contain damages and reserve energy and resources for the next venture.

In some other cases there is no external negative factor and it is just the blindness of the entrepreneur not willing to see the REALITY that creates the obstacle. You remember that one of the most important skills required to be successful was creativity and adaptability. As soon as the entrepreneur recognizes one obstacle in her path, she has to be able to adapt the tactics of the battle being as creative as possible. In most of the cases the entrepreneur’s original dream HAS to be adapted to the reality of the industry and the market in which it operates.

I would like to suggest that you have a look at a video clip in YouTube related to our analysis. Please pay special attention to Guy Kawasaky presenting the idea of “building a prototype”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHjgK6p4nrw

Although he is speaking about the software industry, the concept is applicable to any other area of business. We will talk about it in future posts…

Thanks for reading!