How to think big
Battling my own growth constraint, I've reflected on what makes one think ambitiously. Is it a skill or a choice? How does one master it? Why do we tend to think small and downplay our ambition?
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In today’s FREE newsletter:
Formula for thinking big;
How biases, fear of unknown and fear of responsibility push us to think small;
Desensitisation treadmill or how to make yourself comfortable with the impact measured in billions.
In 2015, I visited my first big-tech All Hands meeting. It was Monday at Yandex HQ, and one of the co-founders, then CEO, Arkady Volozh, gave a speech. One phrase he said blew my mind and stuck with me until this day.
“Why waste time building a million-dollar business? We spend more money on cookies in our coffee points across the office”.
This was mind-bending as my previous companies measured success by hundreds of thousands instead of billions. A million seemed something out of this world, and there was this guy on the stage claiming that it’s pennies.
Since then, I’ve assumed I've internalized this ability to think big. Until recently when I got challenged by a senior stakeholder at Bolt. I brought up a business case for a stage-gate defense. The conclusion from management was that the opportunity of ~50M was so small, we shouldn’t even bother doing it.
Yes, I’ve moved away from the hundreds of thousands mindset, but haven't really grasped how to think beyond tens of millions. To me, the “Think Big” mantra, central to the cultures of big techies like Amazon, always seemed wishy-washy. That is until I realized that this mindset is a critical factor limiting my own career advancement.
This got me pondering - how do I overcome this constraint? Is thinking ambitiously really a skill? If that is so, what elements does this skill consist of, and how do you master it? Or maybe it’s a choice one makes? Then why do we tend to think smaller and downplay our ambition?
Let's figure this out.
📈 The “Think Big” formula
After giving it a bit of reflection, I’ve condensed all the “Think big” components into a simple formula:
Where the scale of thought is determined by the ambition divided by fears and biases. Both fears of unknown and responsibility are omnipresent in every one of us. Biases, on the other hand, are subjective and can multiply our fears.
In other words, the more we are afraid of the unknown and taking responsibility for it (multiplied by our biased thought patterns), the less ambitious we become. The contrary holds true as well.
The more we can disarm our biases, the more we expose ourselves to fears, the more we realize that there’s nothing holding us back. Except ourselves.
Let’s break this down.
⚖️ Biases or thinking big as a choice
"Recently I’ve had a 3-hour coaching session with a so-called “psycho geneticist.” I was doubtful at first as it all sounded like voodoo and cost a ton (x6 what I pay for a typical session with a therapist). But my wife’s example was inspirational (she loved it) and I decided to take the risk. In the end, it was worth every single cent.
The key outcome of the session was the liberating knowledge that everything around me is a choice. I was stuck in the patterns that emerged in my family generations ago and were inherited through upbringing. Now, becoming aware of those patterns, I can make a conscious decision to step out of them. Yes, I’ve been living with the same limiting beliefs for decades, and stopping them is just a matter of making a choice.
It dawned on me that if I don’t make the choice consciously, my limiting beliefs will make one for me. On that note, I am a confirmation bias sensei. My mind can find confirmation for whatever idea comes into my head. The more cognitive space this idea takes, the more believable the narrative becomes. Think I’m a victim? Absolutely true. Think I’m not smart enough? Hell, yes, there’s plenty of evidence. Being too bullish on success? Of course, I have to be much more modest and get accustomed to the life of mediocrity. Streams of rationalizations.
The funny part is if I reverse the picture, the mind does the opposite. I’m smart. Hell, yes, there’s plenty of evidence. I’m responsible and definitely not a victim. Absolutely. And so it goes. The only difference between the two is the effort to make a choice between thinking petty and thinking big. That’s all it takes.
I’ve been surprised to learn that once you dig to the root cause of your biases, it literally becomes “a flip of a switch.” Of course, the habitual thinking is still there, seducing me into the trap. But now, being aware of those traps, I started feeling empowered to make a decision and step out of it.
😨 Fear of the unknown
Fear of the unknown is the trickiest of all and it’s the easiest to conceal. My favorite way to conceal it is with data.
I’ll illustrate it with an example. Typically, when doing a business case analysis, you start up with total addressable market sizing (so-called TAM). Measuring TAM is equally an art and a science. There’s always a missing variable (e.g., adoption %) that you have to guesstimate.
Therefore, the outcome depends on whoever is doing the calculations. If you take a “small thinker,” you will consistently arrive at conservative numbers. Not saying that you shouldn’t be objective and inflate the numbers, but rather look outside the box.
In my experience as a PM, I’ve found that all limits in business ambition stem from a lack of knowledge. Every single time I was conservative, it was either because my knowledge of the fundamentals behind the business was lacking (e.g., how prices work, operations, quality, etc.) or I hadn’t done much user discovery.
It’s much more convenient to say that we’ve reached a plateau rather than figure out what barriers prevent us from growing faster. A much more constructive approach is to say, “We under-deliver value to our customers, and we don’t know yet why.” A plateau means it’s a done deal and there’s nothing to learn; “we don’t know why” invites new learning.
Drawing parallels with everyday life, it’s so comfortable to have firm beliefs as they create a protection from this agonizing fear of the unknown. While giving a visibility of protection from fear, they also limit new learning.
😱 Fear of responsibility
Thinking big comes with increased accountability. Imagine you’re leading a team of four people versus a team of four hundred. The scale of responsibility is not even comparable.
You might be having weekly fires in your small team; imagine how those emotional pressures will multiply in a larger organization. Just the thought of it invites anxiety. If anything goes wrong (and there’s plenty that can), you’ll be held responsible. You’ll be the one that people will point fingers at and drop the blame on.
Essentially, fear of responsibility is driven by a fear of failure. Assuming you can fail invites fear. It’s an integral part of this assumption.
Personally, I’ve failed and continue failing every day. Every single time, I have a choice how to feel about it. If I choose to feel down and depressed, assuming I’m a failure, my growth reaches a halt, and I close myself off from learning anything new. An alternative “growth mindset” choice is to say, heck, it was just one of the options (a hypothesis, if you will), and there are plenty of others to try.
🏃♂️Desensitisation treadmill
I’ve noticed that if I take unconditional responsibility for whatever happens in my team, I always find myself in a stronger position. What’s more, this position invites trust and rarely leads to repercussions. If I take responsibility, I take ownership, and people usually believe I can fix it.
On the contrary, shaking off responsibility damages trust, dampens the collaboration within the team. By default, it means there’s someone to blame. If I give in to this fear, I always find myself in a weaker position. What’s more, this fear creates tensions within the team and just breeds more fear until eventually, people become distant.
The surprising nature of fear - it’s not real. It’s in our heads. The only way to see that is by stepping into it. Take responsibility. Try something new and embrace the uncertainty. Initially, there’s fear, but beyond it—there’s nothing. No holy vengeance. The earth isn’t going to fall underneath your feet.
My sneaky fear always tells me that I’ll be either eaten by a saber-tooth tiger or ostracized from the tribe. Surprisingly, ostracism is exactly what happens if I give in to the fear. I immediately feel myself distant from the people around.
Looking at it from a business perspective, a growing ambition is like a stairway. Once you make your first step, you’re comfortable with 10k revenues; once you make your next one, you’re already considering hundreds of thousands, etc. The same way up to a billion or whatever ceiling you think is best. Every new step requires exposure to both the fear of the unknown and the fear of accountability.
✂️ TL;DR
Thinking big is a skill of making the “growth mindset” choices every single time we're faced with a dilemma (stick to what is known or grow).
It can be boiled down to a formula: Scale of thought = Ambition / (Fear of the unknown + Fear of responsibility) * Biases
Biases multiply your fears. Once you address the root causes (might take years in therapy, however), biases will turn off like a flip of a switch;
Fear of the unknown is driven by lack of knowledge. We tend to find creative ways to conceal it, usually with data.
Fear of responsibility is driven by a fear of failure. Giving into the fear robs you of power and ownership. Embracing the fear, empowers you and improves the collaboration within your peer group;
Desensitization treadmill is a continuous exposure to fears every step of the staircase to billions in revenue impact.