Seen.
Look around
A founder we know well was involved in a negotiation this week.
They shared this with a group of friends - and were honest that they were stuck.
By complete coincidence a member of the group turned out to have a personal relationship with the party they were negotiating with. They were able to offer valuable insight and advice.
It's a big world, but sometimes it proves smaller than we think. The help you need may be hiding closer to home than you'd expect.
Being open about your where you're stuck can be the first step to finding it.
Read.
Think twice
This article from the Atlantic explores why people end up doing things that are against what they stand for.
It touches on a topic we're interested in: cognitive dissonance. The discomfort we feel when our attitudes, beliefs or behaviors come into conflict.
People don't like to feel cognitive dissonance so they tend to resolve it by changing their attitudes, beliefs or behaviours. Sometimes this can include ignoring evidence or re-writing history.
A missed target cost effort, so we tell ourselves we never intended to hit it. A core value is suddenly not important because going against it increased profit.
Creating a business involves working with contradictions. We've seen founders experience cognitive dissonance themselves, and have to confront it in their teams, investors and even advisors - especially during the current difficult times.
We were reminded that surrounding ourselves with people who think differently and can disagree helps us see more clearly. This helps avoids cognitive dissonance and builds consistency.
Learned.
Plug in
Antony's mother in law's iPhone stopped working this week. It wouldn't charge.
As the family technical go-to, Antony got the message that Mum's phone was broken and everyone thought she needed a new one.
Mum resisted this though. Why replace, why not fix?
So Antony gave the phone a look over. Deploying a specialised tool (a paperclip) he removed a quantity of fluff from the charging port and problem was solved.
Looking back on this story prompted a question. Does something similar to this happen with people in business? Is our default "replace" or "fix"?
People problems are emotive and we see businesses devote a lot of time to discussing them. We can end up seeing them as a big, complicated problems. However, this doesn't necessarily mean a big or complicated fix.
Isn't it worth checking?
And finally.
We've had some lovely feedback on our podcast. Apparently it feels like having a chat with people who get it.
Alex keeps asking whether this means podcast is the thing, or the email is the thing. Ben and Antony aren't sure it matters as much as Alex thinks, but he's usually good at the big picture strategy stuff so we'll see what happens.
Feel free to let us know what you think?
Don’t forget to check out the accompanying podcast version of #founderhacks for a tantalising live experience of team atomex!
