On being your own Chief Dissatisfaction Officer

I am one of those people who had about a million ideas for entrepreneurial businesses, and never really did any of them.  Books that automatically rewrote themselves based on the reader’s knowledge and preferences. Component backpacks that could be customized like Filofaxes. Mixed digital/ physical games and competitions. And on and on. I always used to think about them, research them, even build aspects of them, continually bother my friends and family about them, but one way or another, never had the combination of cash, compadres and cojones to actually do them. I realized with a tinge of sadness the other day that slowly, in the background, I have been overcome by a creeping acceptance that my entrepreneurial dreams are never going to happen. I still have ideas, but rarely talk about them, and never even start the journey of planning to do them. In some ways it is a relief/release. I once heard a quote from a famous jazz musician in his 70s saying that when his sex drive finally diminished, it was like getting off a wild horse. I think the entrepreneurial instinct can be a bit like that. This change also reminds me of the mixed feelings I had when reading about the Buddhist concept of nirvana, the snuffing out of the flame of fear and desire. Thinking about my personal experience led me to thinking about a more general tension that exists in all of us. On the one hand accepting where we are in our life, not fighting it and having gratitude for where we are. But on the other hand desiring to grow, do more, be more, give more, receive more. About 10 years ago, I interviewed the CEO of Indian IT Services company HCL, Vineet Nayar. After conducting a very successful turnaround of HCL, he documented his journey in a book called “Employees First, Customers Second”. One of the many interesting tactics he revealed to me was deliberately cultivating controlled dissatisfaction in your employees. Getting them to articulate their vision of how they would like the company to be, and discussing the gaps with the overall company vision. I incorporated this behaviour in the notion of being the “Chief Dissatisfaction Officer “ in some more recent research on antifragility. I guess like all tensions in life, the most powerful thing we can do is acknowledge it, be aware of it, and try to inhabit both sides intentionally and with integrity. #unask #unthink #unlearn #ambition #dissatisfaction