This is a guest post by Christopher Beselin, who is a multi-exit company builder that resides in Vietnam. Christopher was part of the founding team of Lazada (acquired by Alibaba), Intrepid (acquired), Fram (IPO’d) and Endurance Capital Group.
Guest Author: Christopher Beselin
In general (not only in business) when we want to go from A to B (B many times called a “vision”) we insist on identifying and seeing all the key steps from A to B almost perfectly outlined and described (we want to see the so called “plan“), before we embark on our pursuit.
From my perspective, over-emphasizing this theoretically appealing approach significantly hampers our practical ability of actually getting from A to B.
In applying this classic well-planned approach, I would argue that we are suffering from cognitive hubris. The future, its challenges and all of its intricate details are unknowable.
Hence, insisting on having all (or near all) key steps clearly outlined before embarking is a fool’s errand.
Similarly to when we climb a mountain, we can see the summit clearly from the valley – i.e. we have a clear vision of where we want to go and we can eyeball, high-level, the face of the mountain and judge whether its doable or not. However, we can not insist on knowing all the steps, or even just the key steps, to get from the foot of the mountain to the summit.
Instead, we apply an approach ever-so-familiar for many other basic parts of life – we carry with us a conviction that the ascent is doable, but for most or parts of the journey we simply don’t plan it, instead we identify the specific steps and path as we go along – we are pathfinding.
As the face of the mountain gets steeper and steeper, we pull out our climbing rope, axe and belays. We will get into more and more technically tricky terrain and we will many times find ourselves in patches and situations where we no longer can see the remaining path to the summit.
We will even start to doubt whether the climb is at all doable. Fear sets in and we will consider to put down the gear, turn around and give up. In situations like these, the classic planning approach of insisting on seeing all the key steps to the end goal at once only locks us down.
We are unable to take any more steps as our brain tricks us into believing that the pursuit impossible unless all steps to the end can be clearly identified, at once. However, if we can trigger our brain to then instead shift to our pathfinding technique, we can still propel ourselves forward through the trickiest stretches.
While we can no longer see all the remaining key steps to the summit, a pathfinding approach allows us to identify just one more step forwards/upwards at the time. Suddenly, from there you can see the next one, and the next one after that.
Planning told you to turn around and give up, but pathfinding propelled you to keep moving upwards in order to gain a new vantage point of the next steps on your ascent.
Planning told you to turn around and give up, but pathfinding propelled you to keep moving upwards in order to gain a new vantage point of the next steps on your ascent.
After a number of challenging and technically daunting patches on the steepest and most unfriendly parts of the mountain face, you suddenly reach a more open and less steep part of the mountain where you again can see many steps ahead, perhaps even with a clear view of the summit. Step by step.
So many parts of life, be it business, personal challenges or athletic pursuits require a balance between classic planning and basic pathfinding. Most of us hold an irrational bias to plan and over-plan and many of us are mentally blocked to allow ourselves to discard the plan and just apply pathfinding to keep moving forward.
The plan can be picked up and refined at a later stage, but the ability to know when to (probably temporarily) throw it out the window is critical. Companies go under because of this inability to oscillate between planning and pathfinding – “let’s stick to the plan!“
Most of us hold an irrational bias to plan and over-plan and many of us are mentally blocked to allow ourselves to discard the plan and just apply pathfinding to keep moving forward
Pathfinding is a form of creative muscle that can be trained and developed with practice. Even if you aim to apply it in a business context it’s good to remember that it’s quite similar to e.g. the improvisation abilities of a skilled jazz musician or other artist – you practice and practice in order to be able to hit the right notes without even thinking about it or fully thinking through where it might take you long term – you move with the music, forward. Hence the expression “play it by ear“.
Seen from another perspective, pathfinding is also an essential ingredient in allowing yourself to exceed your own expectations. If you always insist on near full planning, potential endeavors that you are evaluating to take on will be rejected out of hand – simply because you can’t see all the steps required to reach the goal beforehand.
Each of these endeavors have the potential to massively surprise you on the upside, but you reject them and thus will not be finding out (only downside in most cases is to find yourself back to square one, with a small amount of time and/or money lost).
On top of that, if you refuse to go pathfinding into an endeavor, you are also not allowing yourself the essential component of getting lost on the way.
Getting lost is one of the few ways we can go beyond our own expectations – if you never get lost, you will stay within your comfort zone and by definition also within your expectations.
Until next time, LET’s BUILD IT!!
