Startup Lessons From The Queen
My best learning comes in the form of either fast, simple lessons communicated from others to me, or long struggles the result of which cause my business acumen to take huge and often sudden catapults forward. What is as valuable as the learning process itself is finding my own simple examples that crystalize my beliefs into lessons I can articulate, apply, and repeat. The Queen illustrates two such key lessons for startups.
I'm talking, of course, about the movie that portrays the actions of the royal family (primarily in the form of the Queen), the prime minister, and the public following the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It's been said elsewhere that the movie was funny and moving - it was - so I won't bother repeating the rave reviews here.
The Queen wasn't at the top of my list of movies to see, which is why I shouldn't have been surprised when I got some of those classic, simplified examples I'm always hoping to find. Just as I've come to expect that the best learning comes unexpectedly, so to do the best simplified examples come in situations that weren't part of the plan or at the top of my list of things to do.
Here they are:
1) You have to surround yourself with the best advisers who give you phenomenal advice, but ultimately you must make the call, even if it flies in the face of some of the advice you receive.
That's what separates the decision maker from the advisers. Collect as much data as you can, but ultimately you're making a decision based on what you believe is the right move. With smart advisers around you, the right advice is often in the room somewhere. It's deciding which advice to listen to and which to ignore that matters.
Case in point: the difference between Blair and his speech-writer. As portrayed in the movie, the speech-writer was using every opportunity to take down the Queen while pumping up Blair - and he took the "take down" part too far. Blair recognized how bad a move the "Queen bends on knee to Downing street" headline was immediately ("when you screw up, you really screw up"), while the speech-writer didn't: the decision maker versus the adviser. Had Blair continued to listen to his speech-writer as adviser in that instance, he would have created an enemy rather than an ally in the Queen. The Queen learned this critical lesson to about hearing advice but then making up her own mind - her mother and husband where both advising her to do nothing, others were advising her to take action: she had to take in all the data and then make a decision.
Lesson for the entrepreneur: an ability to collect huge amounts of data and then make your own decisions (even despite what others are saying) is a recipe for success. Knowing that, you just have to incorporate rule number two, which is:
2) Survival is dictated not by your ability to evolve and adapt, but by your ability to evolve and adapt faster than your environment.
Case in point: The Queen doing what she was raised to do, taking actions based on the experience of going through the war, what tradition indicated, when the right thing was to respond flexibly and uniquely to unique circumstances.
As Blair pointed out in the movie, flexibility - and evolution - is what it takes to survive. Every entrepreneur knows that, of course, but the real insight to be taken from this example is not just that you have to evolve to survive, but that you have to evolve faster than your environment is.
The pace at which your environment is evolving dictates the absolute minimum pace at which you must evolve to survive. Change slower than your environment, and you go extinct. Go faster and you have a real shot at winning.
Had the Queen waited another month to evolve her thinking, it would have been too late. As it was, it was down to the wire -- "the time for statements is past," Blair tells her in the movie.
Startups fail for lots of reasons, but by far the biggest isn't that they don't evolve and adapt at all, but that they don't evolve and adapt faster than their environment. It's your relative pace that matters.
I'm talking, of course, about the movie that portrays the actions of the royal family (primarily in the form of the Queen), the prime minister, and the public following the death of Princess Diana in 1997. It's been said elsewhere that the movie was funny and moving - it was - so I won't bother repeating the rave reviews here.
The Queen wasn't at the top of my list of movies to see, which is why I shouldn't have been surprised when I got some of those classic, simplified examples I'm always hoping to find. Just as I've come to expect that the best learning comes unexpectedly, so to do the best simplified examples come in situations that weren't part of the plan or at the top of my list of things to do.
Here they are:
1) You have to surround yourself with the best advisers who give you phenomenal advice, but ultimately you must make the call, even if it flies in the face of some of the advice you receive.
That's what separates the decision maker from the advisers. Collect as much data as you can, but ultimately you're making a decision based on what you believe is the right move. With smart advisers around you, the right advice is often in the room somewhere. It's deciding which advice to listen to and which to ignore that matters.
Case in point: the difference between Blair and his speech-writer. As portrayed in the movie, the speech-writer was using every opportunity to take down the Queen while pumping up Blair - and he took the "take down" part too far. Blair recognized how bad a move the "Queen bends on knee to Downing street" headline was immediately ("when you screw up, you really screw up"), while the speech-writer didn't: the decision maker versus the adviser. Had Blair continued to listen to his speech-writer as adviser in that instance, he would have created an enemy rather than an ally in the Queen. The Queen learned this critical lesson to about hearing advice but then making up her own mind - her mother and husband where both advising her to do nothing, others were advising her to take action: she had to take in all the data and then make a decision.
Lesson for the entrepreneur: an ability to collect huge amounts of data and then make your own decisions (even despite what others are saying) is a recipe for success. Knowing that, you just have to incorporate rule number two, which is:
2) Survival is dictated not by your ability to evolve and adapt, but by your ability to evolve and adapt faster than your environment.
Case in point: The Queen doing what she was raised to do, taking actions based on the experience of going through the war, what tradition indicated, when the right thing was to respond flexibly and uniquely to unique circumstances.
As Blair pointed out in the movie, flexibility - and evolution - is what it takes to survive. Every entrepreneur knows that, of course, but the real insight to be taken from this example is not just that you have to evolve to survive, but that you have to evolve faster than your environment is.
The pace at which your environment is evolving dictates the absolute minimum pace at which you must evolve to survive. Change slower than your environment, and you go extinct. Go faster and you have a real shot at winning.
Had the Queen waited another month to evolve her thinking, it would have been too late. As it was, it was down to the wire -- "the time for statements is past," Blair tells her in the movie.
Startups fail for lots of reasons, but by far the biggest isn't that they don't evolve and adapt at all, but that they don't evolve and adapt faster than their environment. It's your relative pace that matters.
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