Do Not Let the Founder’s Limits Become the Company’s Ceiling

In entrepreneurship, the founder’s breadth of vision determines the company’s scale. Your starting point matters. More importantly, keep learning and growing; do not let your limits become the company’s ceiling. Robin: “The starting point matters, but we place greater weight on how rapidly you and your company accelerate your growth, and on the breadth of your vision and outlook.” Our journey reaches toward the stars and oceans. --- A manager’s lack of motivation is ten thousand times more dangerous than an employee’s. More fundamental than being unable to motivate a team is being unable to motivate yourself. Businesses and organizations resemble pyramids. The higher you stand, the fewer companions you have; the broader your view, the colder your surroundings. Moving from employee to manager, from middle management to executive, or eventually becoming a business owner brings the loneliness of a single narrow mountain path and the unease of the heights. To navigate this solitary path of growth, managers must learn self-motivation and self-transcendence. It begins with understanding one thing: What once motivated you will eventually constrain you. ---- The manager’s path is always upward, never satisfied Ordinary employees have the most opportunities to find satisfaction in work: bonuses, good benefits, little overtime, a cool culture, proximity to home, harmonious colleagues, leading team performance, recognition of ability… The effort exchanged for these satisfactions has a short payback period: a few months is plenty. Frankly, during the employee stage, work effort delivers the highest return in satisfaction. When employees become leaders, their needs move up a level. Sources of satisfaction suddenly diminish to larger undertakings such as team management, team KPIs, promotion, and equity. These involve delayed gratification measured in quarters or years. Satisfaction now depends on many factors outside your control, alongside greater pressure and anxiety. If your thinking and expectations remain those of an employee—seeking quick, easily obtained gratification—higher positions may offer less return on effort while substantially increasing the risk that effort fails. Move further, from middle management to executive or business owner, and your needs become “self-actualization” at the pyramid’s peak. You must shoulder responsibility for the whole company, learn organizational innovation, develop a second growth curve, shape corporate culture, and build complete systems… At this stage, sources of satisfaction increase again. Yet after immense effort, the satisfaction of achieving them is fleeting. At the top of the corporate pyramid, you constantly scan rapidly changing markets and industries for the next opportunity while worrying about the next powerful competitor. If you retain a middle manager’s mindset and expectations, cannot see the whole picture, and lack the motivation and resilience to lead, your company will neither advance steadily nor go far. ----- Often, it is not that we cannot learn and grow; our resolve retreats first. Every manager must endure unfairness and frustration. The higher the position and greater the responsibility, the more there is to bear. Such experiences broaden executives’ and owners’ perspectives. If managers cannot deal with the gap between expectations and reality or learn from it, how can they coach and motivate employees? The frustrations of managerial growth come partly from objective pressures as the business changes, and partly because psychological development and changes in thinking often lag behind promotion. After all, changing someone’s thinking and psychology is among the hardest things in the world. As managers rise, problems multiply and guidance diminishes, creating fear of entering deeper waters. This fear often keeps us in a safe zone, limiting learning and innovation. Many excellent managers stop just short of the executive threshold because they fear taking that next step. Often, it is not that we cannot learn and grow; our resolve retreats first. ---- Growth means continually taking things up and letting them go In psychology, specific social behavior adopted to meet external demands can be called a “persona.” Promotion means putting on a new persona and accepting new responsibilities and obligations. If moving from employee to manager means putting on one persona after another, moving from manager to owner means peeling away labels. These are obstructive mindsets and expectations: defeatism, passively waiting to be assigned work, satisfaction with short-term rewards, or complacency with modest success. Sometimes those labels even include values and achievements you once pursued, cherished, and took pride in. If you were a sales champion, becoming a manager means no longer dwelling on bonuses. If you were a technical mainstay, you must abandon single-track thinking. If you were an excellent team manager, upgrade your thinking to that of a leader. Jack Ma once said he “regretted founding Alibaba” and, after retirement, wanted to work in education and philanthropy. Critics called it a performance. But as someone both inside the game and able to step outside it, perhaps he was expressing the freedom of stripping away all past achievements, failures, merits, and faults. As you shed these layers of labels, growth can bring more than self-actualization. It can bring clarity and balance of body and mind: the freedom to “return the world to itself and transcend worldly entanglements while remaining in the world.” ----- The higher you rise, the more yesterday’s motivation can become today’s limitation. As management thinker Peter Senge says, you are not your position; you are a person in development. A manager who clings to a role’s duties, congratulates themselves on results, or sinks into distress over unfair treatment remains unambitious, however much overtime they work. Extraordinary accomplishments require extraordinary methods. The higher managers rise, the more they should develop thinking tools of their own to escape existing patterns. Many well-known entrepreneurs pursue things others do not understand: Wang Shi climbs mountains, Ding Lei raises pigs, Musk wants to reach Mars, and Bill Gates promotes vaccines. These are ways to build intrinsic motivation and push beyond themselves. You must step outside your small network, encounter new things, and embrace a wider world. ---- These are stories of ordinary people becoming the protagonists of their lives and awakening their inner “hero.” Do not fear change; embrace difficulty. What once frightened you may ultimately fuel your growth, while achievements that excite you may sometimes hold it back. On the difficult path of growth, a manager’s most important attitude is the ability to keep taking things up and letting them go. Original article: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/WDZXxCZ0W4i-SXSn5IP5xA