Separating probability from consequences is a key to leading an entrepreneurial life. When I taught at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, many of my students failed to grasp this distinction, and it limited their options. One came to my office and said, "I'd really like to start my own company, but it just seems so risky, so I'm going to take a job with IBM."
"What would happen if you give your startup the full try and failed?" I asked.
"I suppose I would go and get a job," she said.
"And how hard would that be?"
"Not very hard."
"So you're telling me that the worst-case scenario is that you'd be right back where you are now: looking at getting a regular job."
For a Stanford MBA, trying a startup was like going to fallure on a well-bolted sport route. Sure, the odds of success were low, but the consequences of falling were minimal. The rope would catch her. She went out on her own, gave it the full effort, and managed to climb through and build a successful startup. But she would never have known that if she had not separated probability from consequence.
The point here is to be clear on the difference between probability and consequence, and to act accordingly. On dangerous routes (or life situations that would destroy you or your company), you should avoid climbing to fallure, no matter how difficult or easy the terrain, unless you have no other choice. On sport routes with big, solid bolts (like Crystal Ball, or the startup venture of my student), you can take on difficult challenges with a 5% chance of success and throw yourself into full fallure mode. It might be scary, but it's not dangerous. The key is proper mindfulness, which brings us to the next lesson.
In 1978, I became obsessed with a climb called Genesis, a smooth, slightly overhanging 100-foot slab of red rock in Colorado's Eldorado Canyon. The route had never been "free-climbed," and most people doubted it would ever fall that way. (To free climb a route means that you climb with ropes, but only as a safety device; you ascend the rock entirely under your own power, without directly pulling on any gear. The rope and the protection devices are only there to catch you if you fall.)
Then one day, I watched John Bragg, a big, burly climber visiting from the East Coast, attempt Genesis. He pulled up onto a smooth overhanging section (the part everyone thought would never be climbed) and launched himself upward with a huge throw. His hand hit a little something up on the wall, and he stuck to it for just a second--a momentary pause--before his hand unlatched and he plummeted down 25 feet onto the rope. Bragg tried this throw 10 or 20 times, and then he gave up. "It's not going to go for a long time," he said.
Still, my imagination had been kindled. "If he could hang a little hold for even a second," I thought, "it must somehow be climbable." And so, before returning to college for my junior year, I ventured up the cliff to give it a try. I just could not, however, find an obvious way to climb with precision to the little hold Bragg had been jumping for, so that I might be able to hang on it long enough to pull up to the next hold.
Upon returning to college, I trained between classes, carrying a needle in my shirt pocket to pop the blisters on my fingertips that arose from the regimen. Yet, even with all this training, I failed to get up the climb. I was physically strong, but psychologically intimidated by the supposed unclimbability of the route. I needed to change my frame of mind.
But how to do it?
In studying climbing history, I noticed a pattern: Climbs once considered "impossible" by one generation eventually became "not that hard" for climbers two generations later. So, I decided to play a psychological trick on myself. I realized that I would never be the most gifted climber or the strongest climber or the boldest climber. But perhaps I could be the most futuristic climber. I did a little thought experiment. I tried to project out 15 years, and I asked myself, "What will Genesis seem like to climbers in the 1990s?" The answer came back clear as a bell. In the 1990s, top climbers would routinely on-sight Genesis, viewing it as simply a warm-up for even harder routes. And less-talented athletes would view Genesis as a worthy challenge but hardly impossible.
That's when I decided to pretend in my own mind that it was not 1979 but 1994. I bought a little day-timer calendar and changed all the year dates. I walked into the canyon and tried to picture Genesis the way a 1990s climber would look at it.
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