You may be wondering exactly why I'm rehashing a three-year-old story. Other than it's a very common story. It happens to many people. Rehashing that is. You don't even have to be in a start-up. You gain many confidantes whom share their own war stories once you publish a story like mine.
Something in Mark Cuban's Success and Motivation series got me to drudge it back out. And also a book discussion group where the subject of resentment came up. There are only two points to this post and they took me nearly three years to grasp. So I better start as it could get long. To even retell this properly - allowing myself to delve beyond the superficial and let the realness and vulnerability show - has been to relive it. Not necessarily a healthy thing to do. Resuscitating the past shoves out the vitality of the present. You read the present in most of my writing...this post has more of the heaviness of being bound to the past by virtue of it being the past.
Start-ups bring out the best in people...and the worst in people.
I think it's fair to say (having talked with all the parties) that I, the rest of the executive team, the investors, and the board all felt betrayed by the founder.
It was unbelievable to me that in a matter of months the founder goes from adopting as our operating bible The Wisdom of Teams to making his own unilateral decisions. One of the last things he ever tells me before we shut the doors is that our initial investors aren't reinvesting. What he neglects to mention: They will invest if and only if he's out. I find that out myself later.
Be vigilant in keeping lines of communication open and honest. And most of all, be honest with yourself. When communication shuts down at the highest levels, I'm not sure there's anything that can save a company.
I've decided the specifics aren't necessary and may steer you off - oh, that wouldn't happen here. But there are so many forms of justified resentment and it's all relative in the eye of the beholder.
I used to hang out a bit in the whitewater rafting and kayaking community. There's a saying that goes, there are only two kind of boatmen(it's gender-neutral): ones who've flipped a boat - and ones who will.
Good times are not a good barometer of people's character. They're not a good barometer of your own, either. The founder had navigated only during good times; the market turned. He had about $400,000 of his own money on the line. Don't be so certain of what you'd be or not be capable of doing when the ground has fallen from under your feet. It's way too easy to judge others. Only after I had this experience for myself did I gain compassion.
So when I say that there are two kinds of boatmen - those who've flipped and those who will - I don't mean that you will necessarily ever feel betrayed or have cause for blame or resentment. I do mean you will at some point in your life have to deal with a feeling of groundlessness - that is if you take any risks - personal or business - at all. (And to risk is to grow.) Your world coming apart at the seams. Or simply taking a huge bold (YIKES) leap into the unknown.
Headlong into a free fall. Anxiety, worry, fear. And if you are an entrepreneur it would be invaluable to learn the skill of staying centered in the midst of seeming chaos and the unknown before your venture starts. There's a difference between being free and free-falling. And once it clicked I've never been afraid of heights again. That is what took the longest to live (intellectual understanding is a cake-walk) and is well beyond the scope of a single blog post....but it's closely related to lesson #2 which I can possibly explain. That was lesson #1. (For intellectual understanding, No Boundary and The Power of Now were useful but not sufficient.)
Rehashing. I wasted maybe a year of my life after the start-up replaying what I could have done better, how I could possibly have been duped - how did that happen, what is intuition about, who could I trust and how could I tell, why I didn't leave earlier to save my dignity and back up the CFO, and.... on and on. Basically thoroughly confused, stunned...and bitter. And I was still grieving too - I had a huge sense of ownership. Of course, I was doing other things in the foreground (or was that the background). Went through a few (dazed) interviews - can't say they went well - and got involved in half-hearted kitchen-table and slightly more advanced start-ups.
It is valuable to learn lessons from difficult periods. But don't think your way through the lessons. I was looking for a carabiner last night to shut the gate (without it the dogs know how to let themselves out). Nowhere to be found. I finally let go of "must have that carabiner now" and calmly went looking instead for a suitable substitute. When you've lost something, it's often right in front of you...or you know it'll turn up precisely when you stop desperately searching.
"...have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rainier Maria Rilke, "Letters to a Young Poet", Letter 4
I was actually able to let go of the resentment towards the founders first. It took much longer to forgive myself. I'd betrayed myself by staying. I betrayed myself by being blind.
"I have no idea of what tomorrow will bring, so I wish to prepare for it.""You fear tomorrow - not realizing that yesterday is just as dangerous." - One Minute Wisdom, Anthony De Mello
People tell me now they really aren't bitter or angry or blame anyone for the layoff or the firing or having to train their replacement in India. And a few genuinely aren't. But resentment and bitterness (and rage) is often hidden to our own selves. If you're having a hard time moving on or making anything new grab hold, you might want to consider if resentment, blame or its kin are lurking.
Resentment does have a side-benefit - you get to be right and indignant - but at what cost? - it's a slow lethal poison. Binding not freeing.
Anthony De Mello in One Minute Wisdom recounts a story of a disciple asking his master:
Why should I drop my past? Not all of it is bad.The past should be dropped not because it is bad but because it is dead.
That is lesson #2. Rehashing, resentment, regret are all are attempts to breathe life into the past. The end-result is it drains - shoves away - life itself. My coach often pointed out how my experience was that the present is being sandwiched to smithereens by the past and future closing in on both ends.
And with that, there will be no more rehashing of this story. I get much more juice writing about what I'm excited about now. I may draw from this experience to add context in the present - but these lessons have been incorporated into my life and that's what I take away with me. Drop the past - and you'll be alive. And people - whether employers, employees, clients and customers, partners, friends - are naturally indescribably attracted to life.
"Make a clean break with your past and you will be Enlightened," said the Master. - One Minute Wisdom, Anthony De Mello
The Dalai Lama has often said that the Chinese government has been his greatest master...contemplate that. We are surrounded by masters. We are surrounded by teachers. We are surrounded by mirrors. The person that irked you at the sales counter or the gym yesterday is your master.
Judging from the comments, I'm not sure how many people really understood the point in Mark Cuban's Success and Motivation series that got me thinking about all of this again, so I'll end with it:
Then I learned a very valuable lesson. Martin had done a great job of setting up our accounting software and systems. I got monthly P&L statements. I got weekly journals of everything coming in and everything going out, payables and receivables. We had a very conservative process where Martin would check the payables, authorize them and then use the software to cut the checks. I would then go through the list, sign the checks and give them to Renee our secretary/receptionist to put in the envelope and mail to our vendors.One day, Martin comes back from Republic Bank, where we had our account. He had just gone through the drive through and one of the tellers who he would see every day dropping of our deposits asked him to wait a second. She comes back and shows him a check that had the payee of a vendor, WHITED OUT and Renee Hardy, our secretary’s name typed over it. Turns out that in the course of a single week, our secretary had pulled this same trick on 83k of our 85k in the bank. As Martin delived the news, I obviously was pissed. I was pissed at Renee, I was pissed at the bank, I was pissed at myself for letting it happen. I remember going to the bank with copies of the checks, and the manager of the bank basically laughing me out of his office telling me that I “didn’t have a pot to piss in”. That I could sue him, or whatever I wanted, but I was out the money.
I got back to the office, told Martin what happened at the bank, and then I realized what I had to do about all of this. I had to go back to work. That what was done, was done. That worrying about revenge, getting pissed at the bank, all those “I’m going to get even and kick your ass thoughts” were basically just a waste of energy. No one was going to cover my obligations but me. I had to get my ass back to work, and do so quickly. That’s exactly what I did.
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