In this paradigm-shifting episode, Scott Ritzheimer shares why rejecting "foolish consistency" unlocks founder greatness across all stages. If you struggle with rigid processes killing innovation or chasing shiny objects derailing vision, you won't want to miss it.
You will discover:
- Why foolish consistency is the hobgoblin stifling your breakthroughs
- What adaptive leadership separates great founders from the pack
- How continuity of vision beats rigid methods every time
This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz
Scott helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits and with his business partner started led their multimillion-dollar business through an exceptional and extended growth phase (over 10 years of double-digit growth) all before he turned 35.He founded Scale Architects to help founders and CEOs identify and implement the one essential strategy they need right now to get them on the fast track to Predictable Success.
Want to learn more about Scott Ritzheimer's work at Scale Architects? Check out his website at https://www.scalearchitects.com/
Mentioned in this episode:
Take the Founder's Evolution Quiz Today
If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Ritzheimer (00:00):
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again
(00:02):
to the Start scale and succeedpodcast, the only podcast that
grows with you through all sevenstages of your journey as a
founder, and today, we've gotanother solo episode for you on
something that I think is a veryinteresting topic. I want to
open up with one of my favoritequotes from the one and only.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, this comesfrom self reliance, and I want
(00:23):
to read it off to you. He says,A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds adoredby little statesmen and
philosophers and divines. Withconsistency, a great soul has
simply nothing to do. He may aswell concern himself with the
shadow on the wall. Speak whatyou think now in hard words and
(00:44):
tomorrow, speak what tomorrowthinks in hard words again,
though it contradict everythingyou said today. Ah, so you shall
be misunderstood. Is it so badthen to be misunderstood?
Pythagoras was misunderstoodSocrates and Jesus and Luther
and Copernicus and Galileo andNewton and every pure and wise
(01:04):
spirit that ever took flesh tobe great is to be misunderstood.
I love this quote. It's it's onethat just always kind of lingers
in the back of my mind, and Ithink it's one that describes
founders and what founders do sowell, founders see through that
(01:24):
foolish consistency. Theybelieve, from the very get go
that there must be a better way.Founders help organizations
avoid what we call a stagecalled treadmill for
organizations, where form startsto edge out function. FaceTime
is more important than gettingthings done. Checklists become
more important than whateverthey were there for in the first
(01:46):
place. As a As humans, we kindof worship consistency. The
World conspires toward it, and Ibelieve that one of the biggest
gifts that founders bring to theworld is the opportunity to
break from that consistency.But, but Emerson's quote doesn't
(02:09):
say consistency is the hobgoblinof small minds, little minds. He
says a foolish consistency. Andone of the things that's really
struck me, just to peel back thecurtain a little bit on my world
as I've been writing the fulllength version of the founder,
the founders evolution book,which I hope will be coming out
next year. One of the thingsthat has been a huge challenge
(02:31):
has been to maintain continuityfrom chapter to chapter. And I
want to kind of unpack thedifference between those two
here in this episode, thedifference between consistency
what you have succeeded bydestroying time and time again
by thing, by saying hard wordstoday and then saying what
tomorrow thinks, even though itcontradict everything you said
(02:52):
today, that that railing againstfoolish consistency that has
been such a big part of Yoursuccess as a founder must be
harnessed by continuity. Yousee, especially once we get into
stages three and four and five,and we start getting bigger and
bigger enterprises around us,more and more people that we
(03:12):
depend on and that depend on us.If you embrace that lack of
consistency, that that desirefor inconsistency that many of
us founders have. I was talkingwith a client the other day.
He's like, I drive to work adifferent way every time,
because I need the variety of mylife. It's such a founder thing
(03:33):
to say, but we have to recognizethe value of continuity. And I
would say that if you understandcontinuity, you can maintain the
inconsistency that you need tothrive and do your best work as
a visionary, as a founder, whilealso providing your team with
the momentum that they need tomove forward. So here's the
(03:54):
difference, consistency is doingthe same thing, especially a
foolish consistency is doing thesame thing because you did it
before. And we all face thisright? There's this pressure to
do it the same way, not onlybecause of the natural inertia
and momentum that it has, butbecause to do it a different way
would be to admit that we werewrong, or at least it feels that
(04:16):
way. And so we all face thispressure Now, earlier in your
stages, there's a lot lesspressure to do this, because
let's face it, you didn't makeall the decisions that you're
challenging. You didn't designthe industry the way that it is
now. You didn't create thestatus quo. But those tables
turn when we get into theselater stages, in stage four and
(04:37):
in stage five, and dare I say,into stages six and seven, that
consistency is not consistencyderived from what others did.
It's consistency derived fromwhat you did, and you now have a
vested interest in protectingthat consistency, because you're
the one who made so many ofthose decisions. And if we're
not careful, we can succumb tothe little mindedness that
(04:58):
Emerson's talking about. Here.So consistency, again, is doing
things a certain way simplybecause we did them that way
beforehand. It what happens whenwe overvalue consistency is we
stop asking the question, why wewe stop? We stop even we How do
(05:20):
I say we stop even recognizingthat we are making assumptions
about the constraints on ourbusiness or our time and what we
do, and we're not willing tochallenge those assumed
constraints because we don'teven know that they exist
anymore. And so founders do areally great job at this just by
virtue of who they are and theway that they think I know for
(05:41):
me I can't be consistent. It'sjust I wish I could. There would
be so many ways that it wouldserve me so well in life, but it
is so hard for me to beconsistent at the same time, I
do fight for continuity, andparticularly in a team
environment, what continuity is,is a recognition of what you're
(06:05):
doing, right? It's a deep,probing insight into the things
that are working, not just thatthey are working, but why they
are working, and a recognitionthat inconsistency, for
inconsistency's sake, isactually foolish consistency. If
you believe that you need to beinconsistent just because you've
been inconsistent before, that'sthe same problem that Emerson is
(06:29):
tackling in this quote. And socontinuity is the recognition
that, hey, we have got somethings right. There are some
things that are working. You'llhear the saying you don't have
to reinvent the wheel. Sure, youdon't have to reinvent the wheel
all the time, but sometimes youare. And continuity, I believe,
is the skill of knowing when toreinvent the wheel and when to
(06:52):
make it better. And so what wewant to think about in terms of
continuity is, hey, how can Inot just do the things that
we've done in the past, but howcan I build on the success that
we've had in the past? How canwe take what's already working
and make it better? How can weleverage the success we've had
not to protect it, not to kindof circle the wagons around it,
(07:17):
but to actually use the thecapital there, in all its
different forms, the humancapital, the financial capital,
the relational capital, theintellectual capital. How do we
take all of these things that wehave figured out? How do we take
all the success that we had, andhow do we actually put it to
work to move us forward? How dowe use our success to challenge
(07:38):
the very basis of our success?And when you do that on a
continuous basis, when you areconstantly taking a critical
look at why it is you do, whatyou do, what it is you're doing
that's working and what isn'tworking, what used to work and
what will no longer work, you'reable to achieve a high degree of
continuity. Now, the benefit ofthat is, let me talk about the
(08:02):
flip side. If you don't do that,what happens is, I forget who it
was. I think it might be.Wickman described this as
organizational whiplash, butwow, I see this all the time.
You're driving in a direction,you're taking your whole team
with you, and then all of asudden, you just yank the wheel
because you see something shinyover to the right, and then as
soon as you're about to getthere, you yank the wheel to the
(08:24):
other direction, because you seesomething shiny to the left. And
when you're in the driver'sseat, I mean, just imagine, like
if you're in a car and someone'sdoing that, if you're the one
doing it, you can anticipate it.You can lean into the turn. You
are holding the wheel and youare putting your feet on the gas
or brakes. You're in control.You can tolerate a far greater
degree of chaos when you're incontrol than when you're in the
(08:46):
passenger seat. And there's onlyone person who can have the
wheel on your organization,which means that you have to
think about what's happening foryour passengers as well. And so
imagine being in the passengerseat, so yanking the wheel back
and forth, it's not a pleasantexperience, and you're not going
to do your best work in thatenvironment, and your team won't
do your team won't do their bestwork in that environment either.
Now, just to throw a bone tothose of you out there, yeah,
(09:10):
there are times when you do needto yank the wheel. The whole
foolish consistency thingdoesn't mean you always keep
driving in the same direction,sometimes as the visionary,
sometimes as the founder,sometimes as a CEO, it's your
job to make the reallyuncomfortable decision to yank
the wheel, because you seetrouble coming. And so there are
(09:30):
times and occasions when yankingthe wheel is necessary, but it's
not all the time, and it's notin all occasions. So how do we
know the difference? Well, weknow the difference through
continuity. We know thedifference by again, looking at
not just what works, but why itworks, and how we can build on
that, and what happens when youcan maintain some continuity.
And you'll see this. This isactually why vision, mission and
(09:52):
values work so well. This is whybig, long term, 510, 1550, year
goals, why they're so. Effectiveis because they don't demand
consistency, right? That's sofar away that if we do something
today and we do it differenttomorrow, it doesn't matter at
all. Those big, long term goalsdon't demand consistency, but
(10:14):
they do demand continuity. Andso here's my advice. I share
this with the founders I workwith all the time, especially
stages four and five. And thatis your job as the founder, your
job as the CEO, your job as thatvisionary leader is to paint an
ever clearer picture of a morebeneficial horizon it. And
(10:35):
that's that's continuity, rightthere, right? It's not
consistency, right? We're nottalking about taking every step
the exact same way to get there,but we are talking about a
continuity of direction, acontinuous destination that's
out in the horizon waiting forus and continuing to lead people
there. So I want you to thinkabout this as you're listening
(10:56):
today, as you're going aboutyour day. How good are you at
fighting against that foolishconsistency that has become the
hobgoblin of little minds. Wherehas that helped you in the past?
How have you succeeded becauseof your ability to push against
the grain and go against thecommon wisdom in your space? And
(11:19):
where is that causing youproblems today, where has a
desire for the desire to pushagainst consistency actually
caused you to unintentionallysacrifice continuity for you and
your team. Where are you pullingyour team away from your long
term goals to chase some shinyobject as a pull, as opposed to
(11:39):
pulling them through theuncertainty toward those long
term goals that you have foryour team, Food for Thought for
today. I hope this episode washelpful for you. These are a
blast. I really enjoy getting toshare with you guys directly. If
episodes like this are helpful,please let us know. We'd love
your feedback on it. If you haveany questions, if there's
(12:01):
anything we can do to help you,we'd be glad. You, we'd be glad
to do that as well as you knowyour time and attention mean the
world to us. So I hope you gotyour time's worth out of this
conversation, and I cannot waitto see you next time. Take care.
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again
(00:02):
to the Start scale and succeedpodcast, the only podcast that
grows with you through all sevenstages of your journey as a
founder, and today, we've gotanother solo episode for you on
something that I think is a veryinteresting topic. I want to
open up with one of my favoritequotes from the one and only.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, this comesfrom self reliance, and I want
(00:23):
to read it off to you. He says,A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds adoredby little statesmen and
philosophers and divines. Withconsistency, a great soul has
simply nothing to do. He may aswell concern himself with the
shadow on the wall. Speak whatyou think now in hard words and
(00:44):
tomorrow, speak what tomorrowthinks in hard words again,
though it contradict everythingyou said today. Ah, so you shall
be misunderstood. Is it so badthen to be misunderstood?
Pythagoras was misunderstoodSocrates and Jesus and Luther
and Copernicus and Galileo andNewton and every pure and wise
(01:04):
spirit that ever took flesh tobe great is to be misunderstood.
I love this quote. It's it's onethat just always kind of lingers
in the back of my mind, and Ithink it's one that describes
founders and what founders do sowell, founders see through that
(01:24):
foolish consistency. Theybelieve, from the very get go
that there must be a better way.Founders help organizations
avoid what we call a stagecalled treadmill for
organizations, where form startsto edge out function. FaceTime
is more important than gettingthings done. Checklists become
more important than whateverthey were there for in the first
(01:46):
place. As a As humans, we kindof worship consistency. The
World conspires toward it, and Ibelieve that one of the biggest
gifts that founders bring to theworld is the opportunity to
break from that consistency.But, but Emerson's quote doesn't
(02:09):
say consistency is the hobgoblinof small minds, little minds. He
says a foolish consistency. Andone of the things that's really
struck me, just to peel back thecurtain a little bit on my world
as I've been writing the fulllength version of the founder,
the founders evolution book,which I hope will be coming out
next year. One of the thingsthat has been a huge challenge
(02:31):
has been to maintain continuityfrom chapter to chapter. And I
want to kind of unpack thedifference between those two
here in this episode, thedifference between consistency
what you have succeeded bydestroying time and time again
by thing, by saying hard wordstoday and then saying what
tomorrow thinks, even though itcontradict everything you said
(02:52):
today, that that railing againstfoolish consistency that has
been such a big part of Yoursuccess as a founder must be
harnessed by continuity. Yousee, especially once we get into
stages three and four and five,and we start getting bigger and
bigger enterprises around us,more and more people that we
(03:12):
depend on and that depend on us.If you embrace that lack of
consistency, that that desirefor inconsistency that many of
us founders have. I was talkingwith a client the other day.
He's like, I drive to work adifferent way every time,
because I need the variety of mylife. It's such a founder thing
(03:33):
to say, but we have to recognizethe value of continuity. And I
would say that if you understandcontinuity, you can maintain the
inconsistency that you need tothrive and do your best work as
a visionary, as a founder, whilealso providing your team with
the momentum that they need tomove forward. So here's the
(03:54):
difference, consistency is doingthe same thing, especially a
foolish consistency is doing thesame thing because you did it
before. And we all face thisright? There's this pressure to
do it the same way, not onlybecause of the natural inertia
and momentum that it has, butbecause to do it a different way
would be to admit that we werewrong, or at least it feels that
(04:16):
way. And so we all face thispressure Now, earlier in your
stages, there's a lot lesspressure to do this, because
let's face it, you didn't makeall the decisions that you're
challenging. You didn't designthe industry the way that it is
now. You didn't create thestatus quo. But those tables
turn when we get into theselater stages, in stage four and
(04:37):
in stage five, and dare I say,into stages six and seven, that
consistency is not consistencyderived from what others did.
It's consistency derived fromwhat you did, and you now have a
vested interest in protectingthat consistency, because you're
the one who made so many ofthose decisions. And if we're
not careful, we can succumb tothe little mindedness that
(04:58):
Emerson's talking about. Here.So consistency, again, is doing
things a certain way simplybecause we did them that way
beforehand. It what happens whenwe overvalue consistency is we
stop asking the question, why wewe stop? We stop even we How do
(05:20):
I say we stop even recognizingthat we are making assumptions
about the constraints on ourbusiness or our time and what we
do, and we're not willing tochallenge those assumed
constraints because we don'teven know that they exist
anymore. And so founders do areally great job at this just by
virtue of who they are and theway that they think I know for
(05:41):
me I can't be consistent. It'sjust I wish I could. There would
be so many ways that it wouldserve me so well in life, but it
is so hard for me to beconsistent at the same time, I
do fight for continuity, andparticularly in a team
environment, what continuity is,is a recognition of what you're
(06:05):
doing, right? It's a deep,probing insight into the things
that are working, not just thatthey are working, but why they
are working, and a recognitionthat inconsistency, for
inconsistency's sake, isactually foolish consistency. If
you believe that you need to beinconsistent just because you've
been inconsistent before, that'sthe same problem that Emerson is
(06:29):
tackling in this quote. And socontinuity is the recognition
that, hey, we have got somethings right. There are some
things that are working. You'llhear the saying you don't have
to reinvent the wheel. Sure, youdon't have to reinvent the wheel
all the time, but sometimes youare. And continuity, I believe,
is the skill of knowing when toreinvent the wheel and when to
(06:52):
make it better. And so what wewant to think about in terms of
continuity is, hey, how can Inot just do the things that
we've done in the past, but howcan I build on the success that
we've had in the past? How canwe take what's already working
and make it better? How can weleverage the success we've had
not to protect it, not to kindof circle the wagons around it,
(07:17):
but to actually use the thecapital there, in all its
different forms, the humancapital, the financial capital,
the relational capital, theintellectual capital. How do we
take all of these things that wehave figured out? How do we take
all the success that we had, andhow do we actually put it to
work to move us forward? How dowe use our success to challenge
(07:38):
the very basis of our success?And when you do that on a
continuous basis, when you areconstantly taking a critical
look at why it is you do, whatyou do, what it is you're doing
that's working and what isn'tworking, what used to work and
what will no longer work, you'reable to achieve a high degree of
continuity. Now, the benefit ofthat is, let me talk about the
(08:02):
flip side. If you don't do that,what happens is, I forget who it
was. I think it might be.Wickman described this as
organizational whiplash, butwow, I see this all the time.
You're driving in a direction,you're taking your whole team
with you, and then all of asudden, you just yank the wheel
because you see something shinyover to the right, and then as
soon as you're about to getthere, you yank the wheel to the
(08:24):
other direction, because you seesomething shiny to the left. And
when you're in the driver'sseat, I mean, just imagine, like
if you're in a car and someone'sdoing that, if you're the one
doing it, you can anticipate it.You can lean into the turn. You
are holding the wheel and youare putting your feet on the gas
or brakes. You're in control.You can tolerate a far greater
degree of chaos when you're incontrol than when you're in the
(08:46):
passenger seat. And there's onlyone person who can have the
wheel on your organization,which means that you have to
think about what's happening foryour passengers as well. And so
imagine being in the passengerseat, so yanking the wheel back
and forth, it's not a pleasantexperience, and you're not going
to do your best work in thatenvironment, and your team won't
do your team won't do their bestwork in that environment either.
Now, just to throw a bone tothose of you out there, yeah,
(09:10):
there are times when you do needto yank the wheel. The whole
foolish consistency thingdoesn't mean you always keep
driving in the same direction,sometimes as the visionary,
sometimes as the founder,sometimes as a CEO, it's your
job to make the reallyuncomfortable decision to yank
the wheel, because you seetrouble coming. And so there are
(09:30):
times and occasions when yankingthe wheel is necessary, but it's
not all the time, and it's notin all occasions. So how do we
know the difference? Well, weknow the difference through
continuity. We know thedifference by again, looking at
not just what works, but why itworks, and how we can build on
that, and what happens when youcan maintain some continuity.
And you'll see this. This isactually why vision, mission and
(09:52):
values work so well. This is whybig, long term, 510, 1550, year
goals, why they're so. Effectiveis because they don't demand
consistency, right? That's sofar away that if we do something
today and we do it differenttomorrow, it doesn't matter at
all. Those big, long term goalsdon't demand consistency, but
(10:14):
they do demand continuity. Andso here's my advice. I share
this with the founders I workwith all the time, especially
stages four and five. And thatis your job as the founder, your
job as the CEO, your job as thatvisionary leader is to paint an
ever clearer picture of a morebeneficial horizon it. And
(10:35):
that's that's continuity, rightthere, right? It's not
consistency, right? We're nottalking about taking every step
the exact same way to get there,but we are talking about a
continuity of direction, acontinuous destination that's
out in the horizon waiting forus and continuing to lead people
there. So I want you to thinkabout this as you're listening
(10:56):
today, as you're going aboutyour day. How good are you at
fighting against that foolishconsistency that has become the
hobgoblin of little minds. Wherehas that helped you in the past?
How have you succeeded becauseof your ability to push against
the grain and go against thecommon wisdom in your space? And
(11:19):
where is that causing youproblems today, where has a
desire for the desire to pushagainst consistency actually
caused you to unintentionallysacrifice continuity for you and
your team. Where are you pullingyour team away from your long
term goals to chase some shinyobject as a pull, as opposed to
(11:39):
pulling them through theuncertainty toward those long
term goals that you have foryour team, Food for Thought for
today. I hope this episode washelpful for you. These are a
blast. I really enjoy getting toshare with you guys directly. If
episodes like this are helpful,please let us know. We'd love
your feedback on it. If you haveany questions, if there's
(12:01):
anything we can do to help you,we'd be glad. You, we'd be glad
to do that as well as you knowyour time and attention mean the
world to us. So I hope you gotyour time's worth out of this
conversation, and I cannot waitto see you next time. Take care.
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