Run Towards the Pain

I have a lot of respect for the people I work with – a lot of confidence in what they do and a lot of gratitude that we are doing it together.  One of the reasons for this is that we figured out something together that became our internal motto across both our strategy and our operations:

“Run towards the pain.” 

There is a lot you can say about pain. All wisdom is crystallized pain.  Great accomplishments require painful effort.  Taking a risk means living with painful uncertainty. 

What does this mean at a practical level:

• In a competitive market most of the alpha exists in places that other companies find too painful to go.  Go there, with aggression. 

• When a problem arises, costs increase on an exponential curve if the problem is ignored.  Go there fast, with resources. 

• If you look close enough there is something bad or embarrassing about every business.  Look really, really hard because it will come up eventually anyway. 

• If you make a mistake let everyone know.  Learn, learn, learn.

It takes courage to consistently put yourself in pain’s way.  Luckily by creating a culture that lives by this motto, a lot of what happens becomes impersonal – blame, fear and shame are replaced by speed and pragmatism. Make sure you are preserving your mental capital and acknowledging the difficulty of the effort when you see it happening.  Run towards the pain.