I’ve been reading over the past few days Eric Ries’ highly anticipated book, “The Lean Startup“. It’s a very good read so far (I’m only about a 1/3 of the way through it) – and I will probably write more about it in the future. But one thing that jumped to my mind while reading it was mindfulness. It wasn’t anything specific in the book that made me consider it; on the contrary, the sum of what I was reading made me think of it.
For the purposes of this post, without even looking at a dictionary, I will simply say that I am thinking of mindfulness in the context of being aware of your decisions and thoughts at an abstract level. In other words, you aren’t just thinking about your business and your startup, but you are thinking about how you think about your business or startup.
Why Think about Thinking?
I believe this is important because inherent in human nature is a slew of assumptions we make surrounding all of our daily decisions, including those that impact our startups. This is beyond the typical assumptions we make when we plan businesses – those are normally readily identifiable. For example, if you are creating financial projections or forecasts, you probably have done something like this:
If I can get 5% of the people who see my application to download it, and 2% of those users to opt for a paid version, and I can increase adoption by 6% per year, then by year 5, we will make $20 Kazillion per month.
Those are important things to think about – at a minimum, they give you a baseline to work with, as unrealistic as 95% (and that’s being generous) of financial projections are.
But you need to go beyond this. To quote a well-known expression, you have to remember to see the forest for the trees. I think in the first 30 pages of The Lean Startup, Eric probably says five times that it doesn’t matter if your product comes in on time and on budget if no one wants it – a point that I actually made in a blog post of my own back in June discussing productivity.
Homer Simpson, probably not all that mindful!
In the same way that if you want to be a better pilot you need to know how the physics of flight work, so too do you need to understand and be mindful of your decision making progress if you want to be a better entrepreneur.
It’s not enough to think about the question at hand and the facts surrounding it to come up with your answer. You have to understand how your mind comes up with the answer and then validate that as well. While this can certainly be a cyclical neverending process (don’t worry, I won’t get all Inception on you!), being mindful in general will greatly help to consider the indirect assumptions and personal traits that impact your decision making processes that you might not even be aware of.
In the above example of financial projections, understanding why the financials are important (not just because you are checking a box on the business plan), how those metrics change over time beyond simple assumptions of growth, and considering whether the metrics really matter in delivering value to the customers, are some examples. Then, take it another level and ask yourself, how do you know what is bringing value to the customers? Are the people you think are your customers even your customers?
By the end of this backstepping, you may realize the projections you were capturing weren’t as critical as you originally thought.
Being Deliberate
Mindfulness is more than simply thinking about how you think. It’s also about being present in the moment with that thinking and making decisions deliberately. This flows from the previous points – being deliberate can mean considering various answers before you even knew there was a question!
For example, you will make snap decisions because you inherently believe you have the right answer. Being mindful means you work to build awareness of these snap decisions so you can truly analyze them, even if they seem obvious. This is a bit like a game of chess – you need to think about how your decisions (that you might not even be aware are decisions!) can each affect the game several moves further along.
You Can’t Escape Yourself Entirely
We all have these built-up perceptions of the world around us – and no one can clear that out entirely. But if you are mindful in your business, at least you can identify when you might be making these decisions.
The other mitigation strategy is to ensure you enlist the help of others and frequently talk about your business against any sounding board who will hear it – customers, partners, other entrepreneurs. This will keep you thinking about your strategy and decisions and force you to contrast your perceptions on your business against the perceptions of others. Reading is another great way to get you to chisel away at your preconcieved notions. Heck, this post started with me reading Eric’s book, and mindfulness doesn’t even show up anywhere in the text of the book.
What are your thoughts on mindfulness? How do you ensure you keep a holistic view of what is going on?
