One of the weirder experiences most of us can relate to is being in a meeting where nearly all of the participants disagree with the decision being made, but the power dynamics keep anyone in the room from objecting. It’s never a great feeling, and it seems to happen for a few different reasons
I'm not one to extol the virtues of failure. I get annoyed whenever people talk about “celebrating failure.” That said, there are some benefits to getting your ass handed to you every once in a blue moon.
Investing time, money and energy into a strategy, only to have the market not respond is like taking a punch. You might not get knocked out, but the effect of multiple blows can take a toll on your confidence and enthusiasm.
I nearly scrapped this column, because they’re not bad ideas per se. Both are still in fashion today, especially in the startup-o-sphere, and like many popular ideas there's more than a grain of truth to them. But these two ideas have run themselves ragged, and I see them doing more harm than good when I encounter them.
Whatever problems you uncover, the most important thing is to ask yourself how your role relates to these issues. How can you do your work in a way that helps alleviate some of the issues you’ve discovered? Are you in a position to directly affect any of these things simply by virtue of being a new person? Simply by being aware of these issues, you’re bound to find new ways you can improve the business directly or indirectly.
You would think finding the biggest problems facing an organization should be easy because of their importance. But in practice, new hires usually don’t get the full story about what’s going on at the companies where they work. People who have been at the company for a while can be reluctant to discuss the big, scary problems with outsiders and recent hires. I can attest to not divulging “the dirt” to new hires about shortcomings or difficulties at the places I’ve worked...
