Outcomes vs. Desired Outcomes
For a quarter century — most of my adult life — I wondered why some startups grew while most failed. I wondered what separated great outcomes from all the other ones. And eventually, through trial and lots and lots of error, I discovered that growth was a consequence of successful experimentation. Soon after, I learned that those successful experiments were the products of valid hypotheses. Then, I realized that those valid hypotheses were correlated to the problems most worth solving. And, finally, I realized that those problems most worth solving were tied to smart (or S.M.A.R.T.) goals.
But I have always wondered: where do smart goals come from?
That was the question that nobody seemed able to answer for me. I’ve asked and asked but the only answers I was provided were (1) “from last year’s numbers” and (2) “from the board” and neither seemed particularly smart — much less inspiring. But after three startups and one graciously mild mid-life crisis — having spent years getting lost and then getting found — I finally uncovered the answer to that rarely asked question: Desires — that’s where the smartest goals come from. Desires are the seeds of goals. We must hear them and respond to them. Or else.
Now, the word “desire” has a slightly negative connotation. It often conjures associations of lust or avarice. And for many reasons — some good and some not so good — we’re frequently conditioned to separate our desires from our professional lives. When we’re acting in a professional capacity, we almost automatically mediate our- selves from our desires because thinking about what we desire feels aggressive, or even shameful. There’s no “I” in “team,” right?
But not only is this not necessary; it isn’t even helpful. An entrepreneur’s desires should be integrated into the desires of their startup. Those desires should inspire and inform their goals.
Desire is a yearning deeply connected to who you are in the world. Desires are born from both your genetics and your socialization. They are not immovable, but they are deeply rooted. They are, ideally, what sets us in motion. They provide us with an honest purpose. They are the guardrails which ensure that the outcomes are really, truly “desired outcomes.”
Entrepreneurs obviously have desires. So do startups. And what I’ve come to learn is that it is the relationship between these desires — those of the entrepreneur and their startup — that ultimately determines if and how something grows. Now, the kind of desire I’m talking about isn’t the salacious kind — I’m not arguing for office bacchanals. Nor am I a proponent of Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism.” Instead, I am suggesting we get to the root motivations that drive you and your business. Stripped of artifice, stripped of pretense, what do you most desire in life — professionally and personally?
The repression of desire is what leads to dissatisfaction, regression, and even in the best cases, unhealthy growth. Although the startup experience can fulfill many desires — for intellectual stimulation, community or validation, for instance — the role of the founder is frequently at odds with other, basic human desires such as physical wellness, intimacy, mindfulness, free play, etc. All too often, the ascent of the startup is correlated with the descent of its founders.
When we start our entrepreneurial journey with the wrong goals — goals that don’t nourish our true desires — bad things happen. We suppress our feelings. We hyper-function. We self-medicate. We regret. Inversely, there can only be healthy growth in business when its outward success is aligned to inner desires. And of course, alignment starts with the founder.
Spiting your nose to save your face is rarely a good business decision. In startups, as in all healthy relationships, desires have to be mutually fulfilling. Not equally. Not perfectly. But mutually.
All that sounds great — except most of us don’t know what we desire. And we’ve been told either that it doesn’t matter or that it’s a private matter. If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve had it drilled into you that the important thing is the rapid and oversized growth of your business. You must do everything possible to keep it afloat, at worst, and racing forward, ideally. If you’re a successful entrepreneur, your identity has become tightly linked to all you did to get from there to here. But what if those societal pressures know nothing about “there” and “here”? What if focusing solely on the business means you’re leaving out a whole dimension of your life? Or multiple dimensions?
I know that in some ways it feels impossible to solve this riddle. And I also know that it’s not. I am in no way suggesting “we can have it all.” But I am confirming that “we can have so much more.” You can discover what you most desire as a human being who is also an entrepreneur, which will in turn lead to fundamental discoveries for your startup. And you can pursue both of those things in concert, intentionally, deciding exactly where you want to spend your time and resources. But pursue them separately at your peril — to reach a truly satisfying outcome, there must be a through line from your personal desires to those of your startup.
I would not argue with you if you suggested that all of this talk about desire has a “new age” whiff about it. You might rightfully even roll your eyes when I suggest that “desires” are like “intentions” in yoga — they set forth a hope and a direction for your practice. I do think that’s an apt analogy, but rest assured, I am talking about desires for wholly practical reasons. I am obsessed with defining and unpacking desire because I know how it can very directly, very practically impact growth for entrepreneurs and their startups.
So what does a startup desire? How is that different from what it needs? Fundamentally, a business needs to make more money than it loses or have sufficient capital to offset its spending. It needs to have the resources to execute. It also needs to work within the constraints of law. These are not desires. These are existential needs. A business cannot exist — at least not for any length of time — without these things.
Businesses presume those existential needs, but they are functionally (ideally) built on desires. The desire to create an excellent product, to provide a valuable service, to impact people’s lives, to beat the competition. Meeting the status quo will not fulfill these deeper desires. And so, we must ask: Which of those desires matter most? And why? Those answers suggest the inextricable link between the founder’s desires and the business’s desires.
We see evidence of this link all the time — in a business’s mission statements, vision statements, and organizational values. Many businesses do ask the foundational questions: Why do we exist? What do we wish to accomplish? What do we fundamentally value? What do we want to model in our behavior? Good mission, vision, and values statements function as distillations of the business’s desires, oftentimes as imagined through the lens of the founder and their desires. When honest and aligned, founders’ desires and startups’ desires function as both the inspiration and the constraints for “The Why” of an institution. They are the purpose that propels the “How” and “What” of a business towards healthy growth.
When we listen to our desires openly and honestly, we nourish our startups and our startups can nourish us. We clearly hear our mission, vision and values. We imbue our goals with intrinsic value. We constrain our solutions to the problems that separate our desires from all possible outcomes. We maximize the chance that our growth is purposeful and equitable.
So ask yourself what you most desire. Then do the same for your startup. To the extent they conflict, you risk unhealthy growth. To the extent that they align, you have the core of your startup’s mission, vision and values and the lens through which success can be defined. Ultimately, the smartest goals are those markers that confirm the degree to which you have fulfilled those desires. They distinguish “desired outcomes” from all other outcomes.
