(reading time 4 minutes)
When I started posting on the internet, my best friend rolled his eyes every time I talked about business. Others would have conversations about me when I was not around. "Who does he think he is." "Moritz giving advice on life? hahah."
The comments were not really bad. But they stung. And they had me shut up about the things I was now interested in.
If you attempted to change (and being a founder, you have), you will have met the same almost invisible force.
You introduce a sensible change to the organization, and suddenly your best leaders sabotage it.
You thought they would be happy for the growth, but now you receive these nasty jokes… Or hear about gossip in the hallway.
You dropped the drinking, but your friends say, "Come on, don't be so boring, just one!"
You wake up early and work disciplined, and suddenly they say, "You are such a workaholic," but you did it out of your own free will and actually experienced the benefits. Now you wonder…
I thought they would support this…. Or?
A tree one day will become dirt again. There is a force (nature's movements) always working on it and the moment the tree stops putting energy into maintaining its form, it will merge back to its environment.
The same is true for us.
When you attempt to grow, change or launch into new, you will be met with resistance. Not out of bad will, but out of the way systems work.
And groups are systems that try to maintain equilibrium (stability).
In the beginning, it's often mum and dad. Later, colleagues, friends, the team, or our managers.
"Environments don't just passively disagree with your growth; they actively mobilize to stop it to protect their own comfort."
When you initiate change, be it for you or your company, you will meet this force. And it can be devastating if you get surprised by it. You want to understand that this is just how things work. Nothing personal. And you want to see it coming so you can prepare yourself for it.
Environments in nature do that, and human groups are environments in nature. And when you initiate change, you want to see the environment you are in clearly.
If in your company people tend to spend every morning 15-20 minutes standing at the coffee machine talking, and this has been this way for 10 years, and you now out of the blue (after seeing an Elon Musk reel) tell them that you want them to be accountable for every 15 minutes of their day, showing what productive thing they have done telling them how much you all will grow doing so, you will meet resistance.
Yet, on the contrary, it is also true. If you want to improve your productivity, being around people who are highly productive will make it really easy, and in fact, also pull you towards being more productive.
If you want to get in shape, being around people who are in shape and do things to stay in shape will make it really easy.
If you want to be focused, having a clean and empty place makes it easier to be focused than if you have a cluttered one.
Understanding that environments have a pull gives you the chance to consciously design them.
What are the environments you have around yourself?
Are they supportive of the kind of growth you want, the conversations people have, and the actions they take?
How could you make it even more supportive?