Fans of long wilderness trips have a rule — never wear new shoes on a hike. Let’s say you made a long choice, paid a lot of money and finally got mountain boots with more NASA technology inside them than the rocket sent to the moon in 1969. When you put on such a technological marvel for the first time, you feel as if you were born wearing them. The shoes are so comfortable that the aforementioned rule may seem like a prejudice and the temptation to ignore it is great. The next two weeks of hiking are likely to turn into torture for you. Instead of admiring the scenery, you’ll be focused on pain points and dreaming of the next resting place to put another Band-Aid on.
Microscopic discomfort, multiplied by 20-30,000 steps a day, can easily wipe away the epidermis of your skin into blood. There is no time for wounds to regenerate while hiking, and the risk of infection is much higher. A person begins to slow everyone else down. Food, water, and fuel can be scarce. In short: “Houston, we have a problem.”
Our mind adequately assesses danger when the potential damage is great and the effect of the stimulus is immediate. But when there are many repetitions to come, and over a long period of time, it is very difficult to imagine disaster as a result. And it is impossible to predict at what exact step it will occur. If you throw pins into a glass filled to the brim with water, thanks to the forces of surface tension, nothing happens for quite a long time. And then, from the next pin, the mass of water suddenly spills over the edge. Such is the nature of nonlinear processes.
It is useful for the founder to keep this phenomenon in mind, because there are many such processes in business. Small pointless expenses, trifling disagreements between partners, and tiny frictions in the team methodically undermine the foundation of the company like termites. And if it were only one symptom, but, as a rule, they are growing like piles of redshirts. After all, ignoring such “trifles” can mean something more - the indifference of the owners, non-systemic processes, lack of resources, etc.
However, the phenomenon can also work to the advantage. When tiny improvements in different places, through repetition and flocking together, create a nutrient solution in which everyone wants to live and create.
Yours sincerely,
-Alexander
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