There are dozens of examples of companies that started scaling up and then simply faded away because they failed to keep adapting. Those that succeed, apply the principle of “what got us here, won’t get us there”: they break away from their biases and can truly face reality.
Constantly facing reality
When working with companies that are scaling up, we’ve noticed their main challenge is delivering more value to more customers and doing that faster than others can do it. The environment for companies scaling up is often highly turbulent; customer needs are evolving, products and services have to be adapted for new markets, new people are joining and have to quickly get up to speed to achieve results, and new competitors can quickly learn and build improvements on existing success.
Such a turbulent environment requires executive teams to face reality at all times; continuously assessing and taking stock of what you are doing, how you are doing it, and its impact, so you can decide what action is needed next. The only way in which you can truly face reality is by making a conscious effort to recognise and break away from your own biases.
Energy is required to overcome biases
As humans, we are inherently biased, it is part of our neurological programming and it has helped us to survive and evolve over the centuries. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman writes extensively about our two brain systems in his book titled ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’. The System 1 (Fast) part of our brain reacts automatically. Once we have figured something out and repeat and practice it over time, it becomes part of System 1.
Our cognitive biases sit in System 1 and serve an important purpose: filtering information (to overcome information overload), mapping information to our mental models (to construct meaning), making split-second decisions (to act quickly for our survival, security or success) and choosing what to remember (to quickly recall next time).
The System 2 (Slow) brain, as described by Kahneman, is what we use when we encounter something new or for the first time. We need to concentrate and spend more energy and attention to figure out what really needs to be done, do it, and then follow-up on the results. The challenge is that our System 1 brain often overrules System 2, as it is looking for patterns in order to not use too much energy (reinforcing our biases).
Don't get blinded
When our Fast brain overrules our Slow brain, it can cause inattentional blindness — some of the information we filter out is important, we imagine details that do not exist because we have filled in the blanks, our quick decisions can lead us to jump too quickly to incorrect solutions, and our memory continues to reinforce the same models, even if these have led us down the wrong path in the past.
This is why scaling up a company can at times be energising and can also cause a lot of stress and exhaustion; you often find yourself in a situation where you need to build things up from scratch, where you need to do things differently than you did before, where you need to change the entire organisational setup, and the list goes on. And it’s important to stay in this mode; you need to keep adapting in order to succeed in scaling up.
One of the key principles we share with companies that are scaling up is ‘What got you here, won’t get you there’. This principle was used by Reid Hoffman as COO of PayPal, when co-founding LinkedIn, and is also used in his book called ‘Blitzscaling’. One of the key reasons he attributes to his successes in scaling up is the executive team living up to this principle by constantly facing reality and challenging their own biases.
Top five practices for overcoming biases
There are many practices for overcoming biases. We share here what we consider to be the top five practices for overcoming biases (which find their basis in the latest neuroscientific studies).
1: Do not jump too quickly into solutions
Our own neurological programming, combined with the pressure to get results fast, can trigger us to jump too quickly into solutions. When scaling up, we think agility means solving problems quickly. That in fact is the definition of fire-fighting as you are reacting to the problems, rather than finding ways to anticipate them or if the same problem is recurring, to figure out the root cause. We need to consciously insert time between facing a problem and jumping to a solution. Problems can have multiple root causes and jumping into solutions too quickly often only addresses the symptoms. A simple exercise such as asking ‘why’ five times to understand and scope the problem leads to better solutions that address the root causes, and not just the symptoms.
2: Adopt a beginner’s mind
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” Have you ever taken a walk with a child and let them lead the way? In the same walk, they will notice and observe things that you simply did not see; because they are beginners, nearly everything they see around them is relevant and therefore little is unseen. Asking open questions, checking for a second or third opinion from a non-expert colleague, and challenging your solutions before acting are all ways to adopt a beginner’s mind to your work.
3: Look at the problem from multiple angles
Take the time to look at the problem that you are trying to solve through different lenses1. This is a build-in benefit in diverse teams. Another way you can do this is by looking at the problem through the eyes of different individuals affected by the issues or if that’s too difficult, to role-play, ask, and involve them.
At a Belgian scale up that we are working with, the COO was asking to hire a business analyst role for 8 months. The CEO kept asking why the role was needed and the COO’s main reasoning was focused on technical capabilities. When they looked at the need to hire a business analyst from another angle, with the perspective on the value delivered to customers, it suddenly made complete sense why they needed to hire someone for this role.
4: Take a break and do something completely different
The pressure when scaling up is intense and there is always an urgent task to complete. Our brain, when focused too intensely for too long, gets tired. By taking a break and doing something completely different, we can let the brain recover, although we know that it is unconsciously still working on finding solutions for scale up challenges. That is why we sometimes get our best ideas when jogging or in the shower!
5: Safe-to-fail experiments
We often look for fail-safe solutions, the imaginary silver bullets that will solve everything in one fell swoop. The risk of applying this approach when scaling up is that what works in one market or one customer segment, won’t necessarily work the same way and have the same impact in another. Identifying safe-to-fail experiments, agreeing on how to track their success or failure, and how to amplify or recover is a more dynamic and agile way of achieving results.
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