In business life, we adults like to think we can predict the world better than we actually can.
This means we often spend years pursuing “A,” when “A” is going to be a total failure, while “B,” which takes a mere fraction of the time, is what will end up being successful.
In the recent LinkedIn Live that I did with Rick and Jennifer from Sales Force Europe, I recounted the example of a Romanian company I talked to where the founder thought “A” was going to get him the UK GTM results he needed, and so he pursued “A” for years, and it ended up getting him nowhere, whereas “B,” which was much easier, ended up getting him what he wanted in a mere fraction of the time.
“A” was perfectly reasonable, quite a good strategy. No one would fault him for pursuing “A.” Everyone, including me, would look at “A” and say, “Sounds good to me, go for it!” And yet not only was it ineffective, it took him years to find out it was ineffective.
Just goes to show us that no matter how well-thought-out, no matter how well-researched, our plans are, they might be wrong. All we can do is try a bunch of stuff.
In other words, throw a bunch of spaghetti against the wall and hope some of it sticks. It’s hard for us to come to terms with how bad our ability to predict the world actually is, but, as they say, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
In this short from that LinkedIn Live, I begin to recount that story:
