Experience of 100+ days of human connections at Refreshed.space
Failure Sucks, but instructs. ~Bob Sutton
Why do entrepreneurs persist with underperforming startups? Is it attachment to their venture? Is it social stigma of failure? Or is it pure stamina to try and defy all odds? When Avinash and I, with a bunch of other fellows in the fraternity, started Refreshed.space, we wanted to understand the human-side of the Entrepreneur. Very few spaces provide opportunities for the Entrepreneur, to explore the emotional/social/spiritual dimensions, which are an integral part of the Human-Entrepreneur and Entrepreneurship. Mostly, all other spaces that an Entrepreneur runs around on a daily basis, are entrenched in the rational/financial/market dimensions only, treating entrepreneurs almost as the AI (Artificial Intelligence) machines, that are in hype/fashion today. At least post year 2000, there is enough evidence that financial world is irrationally exuberant, markets are sentimental, and humans are error-prone (meaning humans are humans). Yet, there is really no respite for Entrepreneurs, they are supposed to be rationally-performing, planned-success driven entities, while facing an onslaught of fear and rejections. In short, Entrepreneurs are often heart-broken Robots.
And sadly, Entrepreneurs themselves have fallen prey to, myth of the hero’s journey, of the human who has superhuman capabilities. But like Bob Sutton has said, failure sucks but instructs. We have had the wonderful opportunity of meeting close to a dozen struggling entrepreneurs, in about 20+ sessions over the past 100+ days. Below, I share some of the lessons of this journey and our experience, oriented around human-connections.
Psychological Approach to Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship can be viewed from an Economic lens (financial outcomes — profit/loss) or from a sociology lens (market responses — social-proof i.e., adoption/rejection), but we always believed that the psychological lens (human agency and communion — excitement/learning) as clearly the missing piece. Yes, the truth is Entrepreneurs don’t fail. There is either success or learning. This view opens-up, only when we start looking at the Entrepreneur from a psychological lens. So, I present below 4 Psychniques (not techniques) that we learnt from various entrepreneurs about enduring the rough journey called entrepreneurship.
Psychnique #1 — Expansiveness-within needs Courage
Entrepreneurship is clearly about expansiveness. Expansiveness is about chasing opportunities.
Entrepreneurship is defined as the identification and exploitation of business opportunities ~Shane and Venkataraman
While Entrepreneurs chase business opportunities in the external-world, every waking hour and sacrifice every minute on their product, what is most critical is to find time to take-care of themselves and first find the psychological expansiveness-within. Founders, please don’t flounder on this one. Taking care of your whole-self means to chase every opportunity you get, to first take-care of your wellbeing. In the process finding time and space for your Physical Body, Intellectual Mind, Emotional Heart, Spirited Gut and your Social Relations. How do you do it? Develop and invest in life-practices around yoga, meditation, mindfulness, vipassana, journaling and/or facilitation practices which help you in each of the dimensions mentioned above. Meet any of the co-travellers from Refreshed.space to know more.
Psychnique #2 — Atma-Kripa (Self-Grace) helps in overcoming Rejections
Let’s face it, Rejection is the Startup-way and rejection hurts. It hurts not just our ego, but emotionally drains the daily life-energy many times. Most critically, it leaves residual imprints on our psyche. Almost all entrepreneurs we met, are oriented to be extremely masculine. They toughen up and get so crystallized into this masculine identity of being a thick-skinned, will-tolerate-any-rejection kind, that they become insensitive to their own selves. Should it be this way that Entrepreneur’s start to beat themselves up even more? NO. I personally don’t think so at all. In fact, I would suggest from my personal experience that thawing the crystallized masculine identity and becoming more emotionally fluid is a much better approach. The same is suggested by Kurt Lewin, father of transition and change theory.
But how does one Unfreeze? It starts by acceptance of rejection. Its about showing grace to yourself. Atma-kripa (self-grace) has been an Indian and Eastern concept for eons. When you are graceful to yourself, you will find that rejections are gifts. In fact, all feedbacks are gifts. They are opportunities to learn about yourself, your product and your work. It opens up pathways to growth, so every time you are rejected, ask which aspect of your self needs growth. Was it the product that got rejected? If so, the developer-self within, needs to improve. Was it the positioning/messaging/pricing that got rejected? If so, the marketer-self within, needs improvement. Was it the value/investment-proposition that got rejected? If so, the hustler/salesman within needs to improve, and so on. Remember, people are not rejecting you. They are only rejecting the deal/offer.
Psychnique #3 — Psychological Use-of-Self and Bringing Grace to that Self.
SELF concept in entrepreneurship is critical. If you are unaware of your various selves within, to which self, will you bring grace? What we found with most Entrepreneurs are, when we ask them to speak about themselves, they are unaware of their various dominant and latent selves. In short, the psychological use-of-self as a concept, to know the various non-conscious/conscious selves that are acting within, and to improve those aspects of selves-within, seems non-existent in the Entrepreneurial world. Entrepreneurs can talk about the external technological-differentiations of various versions, say for e.g. of Android, its features, and everything around it. But when asked to speak about the nature of the various selves within, they fall woefully short. Psychological Use-of-Self, is an extremely powerful concept. Seashore, et. al, 15 years ago have given a wonderful construct of the Psychological Use-of-Self which is provided below.
Psychnique #4 — Self-development for Intentional and Deliberate choices
For Entrepreneurs today, more than Product Development and Customer Development, what is most needed is Self-development and Growth. I have personally conducted workshops, to enable upgradation of the Self. Our Indian culture through various festivals and rituals, has always provided avenues in our society for upgradation of our inner-selves. I have previously written about that here and here too. Entrepreneurs are Change agents in the industry, in markets, in fact in societies as a whole. So, Entrepreneurs need to learn from the context from which they are operating, the societies in which they have citizenship or membership. Indian society has provided these cultural constructs for affective use, for thousands of years now. But most entrepreneurs look at only Western models, and try to apply it Indian context here. Not just with their products, but even to understand themselves, there is a clear lack of deliberate intent in trying to understand the context from which they are operating. The topic/debate on use of Modern/Ancient models can be set aside for another blog-article, as I don’t want to digress, but I brought that in, to highlight and contrast the approach of making Intentional and Deliberate choices vs making non-conscious choices. You cannot be an Accidental Entrepreneur and continue to operate from habitual instincts. Intentional and Deliberate choices, provide for Self-development and Growth, helps foster leadership-within, facilitation-within, change-agency within. And all of it, starts with the Psychological understanding of our own blockers-within, our own resistances, our own struggles, our own anxieties, to make intentional and deliberate choices.
It starts by dissolving and releasing our own conditioned, defensive, preferred patterns of operation, to allow freedom of choice and expansiveness to unfold.
Further Exploration — Immediate & Urgent need to handle Psychological Messiness
We have an urgent need in the Ecosystem and in our societies, to nudge entrepreneurs away from seeing themselves as Robots, albeit Heart-broken robots, who are willing to burn themselves out. The stereotypical tags of nerds, geeks, hackers has not helped either. From the 100+ days of humans connections at Refreshed.space, what we found is that, if you provide a psychologically-safe space for Entrepreneurs to open-up, they are pretty sensitive, sometimes even over-sensitive. We also found that there is an immediate need for entrepreneurs to get in touch with their inner-selves. Ability to create any change, starts by ability to change our inner-selves first, isn’t it? Most Entrepreneurs don’t like where they are, and they are not happy. Yet, we found they don’t have access to the psychological abilities, that provide them with practices, to change what they don’t like within, and pursue opportunities which they like. While Entrepreneurs choose to do, what they like, they also need to be Happy. Happiness in general is clearly about, not just doing what you like, but also liking what you do, isn’t it? The same holds good for Entrepreneurial Happiness too.
Some of them are still very reluctant to explore their inner-world, lest they open a pandora’s box. It tells us that courage to explore-within, and live examined-lives is not easy, even for Entrepreneurs. If you are a Startup founder or Entrepreneur, or even a career-professional, looking to understand how to be Happy, in the middle of the triple messiness of markets, technology and psychology, you need to talk to the fellows at Refreshed.space. Refreshed.space is a recharging space for professionals, to super-charge their well-being as well as the well-being of fellow professionals in the Startup Ecosystem.
Happiness can only happen if you willfully seek it within, and make it happen volitionally. So then, what are you waiting for? Apply here to participate and spread the words to your friends and fellows. Look forward in anticipation to work with each and everyone of you. Good luck and all the very best!
