When Awesome Is Not Awesome
For my money my friend and mentor Bill Mann has the best background going on Twitter.
It’s an old, blurry photo, but yes, that’s him interviewing Elon Musk way back when and it captures the moment that he said something along the lines of this to the founder of Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX:
When you watched the Falcon 1 launch but then explode over the Pacific, that was awesome, right?
Musk’s response, after this awkward locking of the eyes, went something like:
I was out of money. I had gotten divorced. And I had watched my life’s work blow up. So, no, Bill, it was not awesome.
I remember the rest of the interview being even more awkward. At least it was memorable.
Of course, SpaceX got its fourth launch right and has gone on to be a pretty spectacular success. I wonder if you asked Musk today if all of those development pains had been awesome (maybe Bill could have phrased it better), with the benefit of hindsight, he might say yes. After all, very few people are ever entrusted with the resources to do something so daring, and look, he probably doesn’t get to where he is today absent that failure.
But few challenges feel awesome when you’re in them even if they turn out to be just that. For example, if someone said to me in 2020, “Hey, remember that time during Covid when you thought several of your businesses might run out of money. That was awesome, right?” I would probably respond just as Musk did. Because no, it did not feel awesome.
Upon further reflection, seeing what some of our businesses did to stay the course and learn from the circumstances to make lasting improvements to their operations, there was a lot of awesome work that was done even if we didn’t know it at the time. In other words, we were winning when it felt like we were losing.
On the flip side, it’s possible for losing to feel like winning. We’ve seen this when the initial dopamine hit of winning a big contract gives way to realization that we may be unable to profitably fulfill it. Or there’s this sentiment from a Phoenix Open official after Sam Ryder’s ace on the famous 16th hole lead to a hurricane of beer cans being thrown from the crowd, hitting golfers and officials:
In neverending games, and enterprise is certainly one of those, you’re never too far ahead or behind, are always one breakthrough or pitfall away from a sea change in outlook, and can’t take credit or blame personally. The best advice I’ve heard for coping with that reality is to “stay medium.” I also like to think we are all works in progress. But I’m also fine with Mr. Musk for being touchy about Bill’s comment back then given the circumstances.
– By Tim Hanson