Undercurrents
Photo by Naja Bertolt Jensen on Unsplash
Overcoming the Invisible Forces Holding You and Your Team Back
TL;DR - What if the biggest obstacles holding you and your team back are the invisible ones you are creating yourself? That is the question I’m asking in my next book. If you are a Founder or Investor and would be open to being interviewed for it, please drop me a note at the email address below.
Throughout history, many of the most important breakthroughs in speed were a result of reducing friction, not just building bigger engines or sails.
In 1947, it was innovations in aerodynamics that finally allowed Chuck Yeager and the US Air Force to break the sound barrier. While the new jet engines of the day had more than enough horsepower to go fast enough, the antiquated wing and fuselage designs rendered the planes unnavigable at high speeds. Air resistance was literally holding them back.
At the America’s Cup in the early 2010s, the introduction of both multihull designs and hydrofoil technology allowed the boats to quadruple their speed in a span of 8 years. Again, most of that 4x increase in speed did not come from building bigger or better sails to increase propulsion. They simply reduced the friction working against the boat as it moved through the water.
Today’s founders are in a similar predicament. It’s never been easier to start a company, and there are more tools and money available to grow a startup faster today than ever before. But still, why is it so hard? Why do so many companies flame out?
The answer is friction, or what we like to call “Undercurrents.” Most of us focus the majority of our energy on trying to build bigger engines and sails. But we fail to consider the invisible forces that might be holding us back.
Undercurrents are the invisible forces that slow a company down or even tear it apart when it’s growing at high speed. They are the emotional, interpersonal, and organizational dynamics that slow down decision-making, undermine collaboration, and kill the spirit of innovation. Unlike currents you might experience in a river or the ocean that are out of your control, these organizational Undercurrents are almost always the result of something we are doing or not doing. They are also generally invisible, which is why when things get hard, leaders tend to ignore them and focus their energy instead on optimizing the things they can see and thus control: product, marketing, cash flow, headcount, etc. We optimize what we can see in a desperate attempt to increase speed while never dealing with the invisible factors that are slowing us, our teams, and the entire organization down.
As a coach and advisor to hundreds of CEOs over the last 10 years, I’ve noticed my conversations with clients almost never have to do with what products they should build or what growth strategies they should employ. Which means to say, we almost never talk about building bigger engines or sails. Instead, we spend most of our time talking about the things slowing them down and frustrating their best efforts to innovate, grow, and win.
This is where you come in. We are embarking upon an extensive research project to learn as much about Undercurrents as possible.
What causes Undercurrents?
What are they sometimes mistaken for?
How do they slow us and our companies down?
How much do they cost startups that don’t deal with them?
What strategies work best to identify and overcome them?
Over the next few months, I will be interviewing dozens of CEOs about what Undercurrents they have seen at play in their companies and how they learned to deal with them. This will be one of the most ambitious research projects we’ve ever undertaken at Velocity.
Which is why we need your help!
If you or someone you know is the CEO or Founder of a funded Series A+ company or an Investor with 3+ years of experience investing in and advising founders, AND you would like to share your experience and perspective on this topic, I’d love to hear from you.
Please write to me directly at edward@velocitycoaching.com, and we will set up time for an interview.