The Trap Of Conviction
There is a trap we entrepreneurs invariably fall into: the trap of conviction.
It works like this. We have an idea. We fall in love with the idea. We share it with friends, colleagues and random strangers.
We lean into the positive feedback. We walk away from the negative feedback.
The people who love our idea are our friends.
The ones that don’t are simple fools who just don’t geddit. (Idiots!)
There’s a kickass scene in the movie Conclave where Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph (Rafe?) Fiennes, addresses his fellow clerics: “There is one sin that I have come to fear above all others. Certainty.”
He appeals to his brethren to allow for nuance, for diversity, for doubt. He asks them to recognise their own flaws and the possibility of being wrong in their convictions.
“Our faith is a living thing precisely because it works hand in hand with doubt.”
Cardinal Lawrence goes on to chide his audience. He appeals for them to vote for a pope who will doubt, ask forgiveness and then move forward. Inspired.
Entrepreneurship, in a sense, is as much of a leap of faith as any doctrine, religion or belief. In the movie, Lawrence ends his speech with, “If there was only certainty, there would be no need for faith.”
This past weekend, I heard a great example of this in action. I attended Reforest Fest, an initiative by the wonderful folks at Greenpop, a collaborative partner of Heavy Chef.
Lauren, Misha and the entire Greenpop team are doing amazing work. On Saturday morning, festival attendees planted an incredible 5,000 indigenous trees to replace invasive species that have overrun the Uilenkraal Forest near Gansbaai.
One of the facilitators was Tim Wigley, a farmer from the Eastern Cape. When Tim began farming in 1980, he had a template for how to plant crops. He had a strong idea of how farming should be done and he executed it exactly according to plan.
However, things didn’t go as expected. Tim’s farm struggled. His crops suffered. Soon, Tim realised that by planting monocrops using industrial chemicals, he had decimated the natural biome that had existed before.
“I had committed ecocide!” Tim confessed to us.
After speaking with some local people in the area who had been farming for many generations, Tim did something quite extraordinary.
He listened.
He gathered feedback from experts and peers. “Most of all,” he said, “I listened to the land.”
The key, he began to understand, was to stimulate diversity. Wigley dug up most of his crops and redeveloped his farm into what is now recognised as one of the key permaculture case studies in Southern Africa.
Tim had stumbled into the agricultural version of the Lean Startup Method.
He tested, observed, welcomed feedback (both positive and negative), and adapted.
To this day, Wigley continues to innovate in this way. If you’re curious about his methods and philosophy, Tim runs regular permaculture workshops at Terra Khaya, near Hogsback. Tim is a Heavy Chef well worth learning from.
Tim Wigley released his conviction on his original idea and was released into a much richer, sustainable solution.
Incidentally, the root word for conviction is the same as convict.
If we are convicted by an idea, we are imprisoned by it.
Entrepreneurs and magical individuals like Tim Wigley show that we can free ourselves of blind certainty by listening and learning.
Gathering feedback from peers, community members and potential customers can be scary, but it’s also liberating.
In doing so, we move from being imprisoned to being inspired.
