#01 The cost of Inaction

Welcome to The Growth Lens.

If you're reading this, you're one of the first people here, and I mean it when I say I'm glad you are. This is a fresh take, in a new style.

Here's what I want this to be. Not another list of leadership frameworks you've already screenshotted and forgotten about​. I want to give you perspective, the kind you only get from watching the same human patterns play out again and again: in startups, ​with friends, in families, in group chats, in your own head at 2 AM when you should really be asleep​ (note to self: MUST. SLEEP. EARLY).

Some weeks this will look like startups. Some weeks it'll look like life. Underneath, it's usually the same wiring doing the same silly things.

This week's pattern is one I catch myself doing too, and it costs more than any of us like to admit.

We're All Doing It

You know the feeling. Something's off. A hire isn't clicking. An employee has mentally clocked out but keeps showing up in ​the flesh. A friend's replies have gone from paragraphs to "haha yeah." You feel it.​ You can't put a name to it, but you know what I'm talking about, right?

And instead of looking straight at it, most of us do this elaborate little dance around it and hope it resolves on its own, like ​the problem is a toddler that'll just fall asleep eventually.

The founder decides the org chart conversation isn't a priority this quarter. Funny how it's never a priority any quarter. 

The manager throws a raise at the ​team motivation problem and hopes it sticks, like duct tape on a cracked pipe. 

The friend just stops texting first and calls it giving space​, and apparently, with PR skills. 

We tell ourselves this is patience. It isn't. It's​ what I call avoidance​. 

I think of it like a leak in the roof. Nobody wants to climb up there and actually look at it. So we put a bucket under it, admire our problem-solving skills, and go back to watching Netflix while it rains inside our house.

The Bill Always Comes

Here's the part that gets me every time. The problem doesn't stay the same size while you wait around. It compounds, like the world's worst savings account. The hire who "isn't quite working out" costs you six more months and the trust of the entire team. The friendship you went cold on doesn't pause​. ​I​t disintegrates and by the time you notice, there's nothing left to fix, only an apology text you'll draft four times and never send.

Avoiding the hard conversation today doesn't make it vanish. It just ​makes it bigger​. And worse. And angrier. (yeah, it's happened to the best of us)

Where I See It Most

At work, it's the leader who keeps "monitoring the situation" long after the situation has ​flared up, lit a bonfire, and ​started a forest fire. 

In life, and this one ​shocks me, it's young people. I keep meeting people who are sharp at their jobs, great in a crisis at work, and somehow ​suck when it's time to tell a friend something feels off. ​

You get passive aggressive on social media instead. What's that all about?

What the Ones Who Got Ahead Actually Did

I've watched a lot of founders, leaders,​ peers and friends up close over the years.

The ones who came out ahead weren't the smartest ​ones. They were just the ones who looked directly at the thing everyone else was tiptoeing ​a​round.

That's really the whole trick. ​It's also courage. ​Courage to look. Courage to act, even when looking is the last thing you feel like doing.

This Week's Nudge

Is there something, at work, at home, in your own head, that you've been hoping will sort itself out?

It won't. It never ​will.

Ask the roof​, and that bucket.

You already know what to do. You've known for a while now.

Go do it.

Until next time.