As promised, I am going to show you guys one of the most pivotal changes to decision making that you can implement as a business owner.
Often-times we believe our “mindset” is what is holding us back from making clear decisions. I am here to show you that’s not the case.
Chances are you just lack a mental framework that you can rely on time and time again.
As business owners we make judgement calls based on the different lenses we must have on. This is called perspectivism.
You can either use perspectivism consciously to your advantage and make better linear decisions or let it “scatter” the plots on your graph aka your focus.
Think target practice with a bulls-eye.
“Focus” is represented by how closely your plots are grouped together.
We humans are hardwired naturally with binary thinking patterns. But are capable of training ourselves to think quadratically for survival.
This is because opposing forces in our head (stress) permutate in order to find balance. (Yes/No becomes Maybe/Only-If)
One of the best way to synthesize mental models is to use planes on separate axises to represent the binary opposing forces. And each quadrant to represent all the possible permutations.
It’s important to keep in mind these permutations are technically infinite but we are not capable of processing that much information in real time.
The best way to simplify the graph would be to create an archetype for each quadrant to visualize the opposing forces in our head. The battle for control.
As business owners the conflicting decisions we often come across happen because of the battle between Financial Control v.s Creative Control and one of their infinite permutations.
As sole proprietors, no matter which role we identify ourselves with the most we actually use 4 different perspectives without realizing.
- You are the Entrepreneur
- You are the Owner
- You are the CEO
- You are the Investor
Now you can see how that can lead to problems.. These are 4 separate roles for 1 brain. And because these roles overlap we make decisions but then seek ways to self- validate them or in this case have one role confirm the decision made by the other role.
Think of larger corporations. Simply put. We wouldn’t bring the investor to client meetings just like we wouldn’t bring the entrepreneaur into the financial meetings.
But here we are tugging ALL FOUR around. This isn’t sustainable..
Probably the one cause of burnout. I’m not going to go too deep into eachrole. If you’ve been in business long enough they should all be self explanatory. But I will summarize as so.
- Entrepreneur = creative energy
- CEO = constructive energy
- Owner = soft metrics
- Investor = hard metrics
These individual roles are not as important as the quadrant permutations we will be going over.
- Quadrant 1 = ENT + INV
- Quadrant 2 = ENT + OWN
- Quadrant 3 = OWN + CEO
- Quadrant 4 = CEO + INV
These are our archetypes in formation.
I am not the deepest MBTI thinker, far from it in comparison to others on here.
But even if you’ve read a little Jung you’ll spot characteristics in each quadrant that may look familiar to you.
By now you can already tell your inner Entrepreneur and CEO are fighting for creative control and your inner Owner and Investor are fighting over financial control.
This is why we must synthesize them into archetypes in order to tame their oppositional forces. To have peace of mind we just need to combine financial control with creative control represented as the combinations between each quadrant.
Before we go over these combinations let’s go back to Jung, now MBTI is way more complex than this but it’s safe to say we can assert these archetypes with confidence.
- The King
- The Warrior
- The Magician
- The Lover
If you have zero idea what I’m talking about this is a great book to get.
By now you should be able to spot the symmetries. But for the sake of congruency we will rename them appropriately for business.
- ENT + INV = The Visionary (magician)
- ENT + OWN = The Ambassador (lover)
- CEO + OWN = The Admininstrator (king)
- CEO + INV = The Capatlist (warrior)
Now it’s your responsibility to become better self-aware and honest with yourself. Introspect and discover which of these 4 archetypes suits you best as a business owner.
Once you’ve figured that out GO ALL IN. If you are not an administrator you need to hire a CEO to make those decisions for you.
You may find out you are not creative at all and growing an existing business as a CEO is easier than envisioning one from scratch as an entrepreneur.
This is also how you can vet for better partnerships.
Are your plots (decisions) scattered all over your graph?
By choosing which quadrant you will specifically work in from now on you will be able to make better focused decisions moving forward. At the very least use this to make yourself conscious and situationally aware of which roles your decisions are coming from.
I’ll end this thread which use case and an example. As mentioned previously we are hardwired to think in binaries. It may take some of us more time than others to train ourselves to think in only one quadrant.
And if you don’t have a team or the partnerships to delegate to this can be a difficult concept to apply.
So I recommend as follows:
Start by picking 2 quadrants until your business grows larger and you are able to delegate more of the work. In order to allow you to narrow your focus.
And keep in mind it maybe a while before you are operating fully inside one quadrant. Even the most famous entrepreneurs operate on the binary along a single plane.
