It’s Ok Not To Have All The Answers

As soon as I decided to coach again, questions started swirling in my mind. Which approach from all the modalities I’d learned should I use? Which user need should I address? What market should I target? I thought about options and listed the pros and cons. My mind tried to compute the best course of action. I got confused and frustrated rather than finding clarity.

Getting Thoughts out of One’s Head

The same thing happened when I founded Akesa Health. I had been thinking about an app to help users get back to mental wellness without the help of a therapist. I had some ideas of some features I wanted for the app. I’d been reading and thinking about mental health and neuroscience too much, like… for years. I didn’t know how to boil all this knowledge into a simple product.

When many parameters are involved, I have trouble thinking things through. When my mind can’t compute complex strategies, I get sheets of paper or my laptop and do a brain dump. I can analyze ideas more easily after they’re out of my head. I wrote down a list of features I wanted for the app. Once they were on my laptop, I could sort out features needed for the MVP and features I could implement in future app iterations.

Putting Ourselves in Motion

When living in Singapore, I was part of a racing crew on a forty-three-footer. Sailing has taught me a lot about maneuvering and adjusting in business and life.

Before a race, in the harbor, the crew strategized about the best course to the finish line. But sailing like life involves dealing with multiple parameters such as currents and winds that can change at any time. There’s only so much value gained in strategizing a course of action. At some point, we need to get out of the harbor and start sailing. Only by being on the water can we know the currents and winds.

In the past, I wanted to find the best course of action and strategic plan. I worried about making mistakes. At times, I got stuck in analysis paralysis and missed opportunities.

I remember a coach telling me: “in life, there’re only successes and learning. I don’t think mistakes are mistakes if we learn from them.” Thinking about potential missed opportunities gets me out of analysis paralysis.

The Rubber Hits the Road

As we get out of the harbor, we realize the winds are sometimes more favorable than predicted, or we experience unforeseen circumstances and adjust.

Last year, after I put my thoughts on paper for the Akesa Health app and identified the features I wanted first, I designed the MVP and got someone to code it. Seeing the product take shape helped me see features I hadn’t thought about. Getting the app tested surfaced issues that I’d not foreseen because I could think only that far. This helped the team brainstorm new features that will improve what I’d initially envisioned.

The Only Certainty is Change

When I was working with General Electric, we had day-long strategy sessions to develop multi-year strategy plans. I loved those sessions. We had a plan to stick to, even if we often had to readjust course. In business school, I learned how Shell develops complex risk scenarios to plan for these.

Well… the pandemic happened, and few could have predicted it.

The winds and currents of life keep changing. A rigid strategy might look reassuring but often leads to missed opportunities we close our eyes on and difficulties we’re slow to respond to.

An Eye on the Objective and an Eye on Telltales

To go back to my sailing analogy. As we started racing, the crew looked in the direction of the finish line. The captain had a hand on the rudder but also kept an eye on the sails’ telltales to see how the winds were changing and tacked port or starboard and trimmed the sails to harness the wind’s power.

I try to do the same in business and life. I keep objectives in mind. I define the next steps with some accuracy. I don’t overthink what will happen a few months down the road because, as the past few years have shown, there’s little we can predict with accuracy. I think it’s more important to be present, mitigate issues and leverage favorable winds that might not present themselves again.