Growth Is Business and Personal

Soon I’ll be boarding my first work flight in two and a half years.  Early March 2020, I was awaiting departure in the Sao Paolo airport, eating pao de queijo, buying Havaianas, and glued to the TV stories about the climbing COVID case numbers at home.  Two weeks prior, I’d flown through an eerily dark and deserted Munich concourse on my way to South Africa.  I spent a week in South Africa, full of work and wildlife sightings, and left the day of their first confirmed COVID case.  My week in Brazil was business as usual, with good food, good work and great people, and no idea of what was to come.

You’re (Not) On Mute

Over two years later, after a pandemic and majorly shuffling my cards of life, I’m on my first work trip (a little jaunt to Tennessee) with new business colleagues.  There will be five of us, all working on building our business, many of us meeting in person for the first time, without pet appearances or anyone accidentally on mute.

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Whether business or personal, building something new takes time.  Building back after a crisis takes time.  My focus has finally and decidedly shifted from recovery to building.  The way it was is gone, but what’s in its place might be so much better.

There have been many times the last year or so I thought, “I’m here!  I’m back to my old, fighting self.”  Then I’m surprised when I backslide and doubt, the big bully, creeps in.  I’m even more surprised, after standing up to doubt like a fist-clenched kid on the playground, to feel strength growing in a new way.

The reality is that my “here” and “made it” are going to look different than before.  My internal targets are different, and I’m starting to suspect that they are much better for me.  Instead of plateauing at the previous “good”, I’m going to outshoot it for a whole new way of being.  I have higher expectations of myself, not in terms of my resume or list of achievements,  but in how I live my life.

At the same time I have less expectations, granting myself time and space to comeback at my pace.  I’m listening to myself, trusting my instincts, believing in my abilities to make good decisions and caring less about the mistakes I’m going to make along the way.  I’m more open to fail fast and learn.  I’m open to what I don’t know while knowing I’m capable of learning it in a hurry.

Surrounding myself with startup founders hasn’t hurt.  Their bravery, figure-it-out spirit and headlong dives are contagious.  I’ve been reminded how much I love to learn.  Learning how to reframe your thinking is such as gift, and the landslide of new technology I’ve been forced to learn, and the confidence to learn it, is priceless.

I’m applying the agility and spirit of a startup with the depth of decades of corporate experience.  Every day I think - these two need to meet more.  There are so many discoveries startups and enterprises can make from

one another.  Enterprises are likely in the dark on the quantity and speed of new technology being designed by startups, and they could learn process innovation from young founders with none of the old context weighing them down.  While founders could take some of the existing processes and wisdom and save some pain of recreating every wheel.  Not every step requires a new app.  Save something for your next launch.

I’m lucky to see both sides.  Like I learned in Girl Scouts, make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.  And also, try the cookies and the pao de queijo.

Whether personal or business, growth is:

Like knitting, a series of stitches, one after the other, until you’ve made something.

A piece of music, building, with quiet parts, angry parts, key changes, all leading to the crescendo.

Losing some things and finding new ones.

A higher floor and ceiling.

A series of base camps, where the backslides are smaller and iterative momentum wins.

Looking in all directions for ideas - up, down and sideways.

Hard work

Worth it

Brave

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