Some Tensions Are Actually Healthy
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- Being certain enough about how you want to run things...but always cautiously open to discovering where you need to modernize your thinking.
- Doing what you can to keep an awesome employee around...without crippling the long-term prospects of your firm and benefiting from a younger and cheaper employee who brings new things to the collective experience.
- Placing big, expensive bets on the future...without mortgaging the present by eroding too much of your safety net.
- Hiring for the work that you have...versus grabbing that once-in-a-decade hire that just comes along before you're really ready to maximize their contribution.
- Pricing work to be almost certain to land it and fill the hole in your capacity...or just saying "screw it" and letting the chips fall where they will because at some point you're going to have to press the envelope.
- Knowing in your gut that a big leadership decision is begging to be made...but also knowing that you're quite a bit ahead of the larger team, most of whom are not ready to embrace this change.
- Not wanting to be that owner who changes coaches yearly, three years in a row...but also realizing that this new business person or head of account service isn't cutting it. Do you chase sunk costs or cut your losses?
- Knowing with increasing clarity what you want out of life...and realizing that the business needs something different from you.
- Realizing that your entrepreneurial instincts are what keep your firm ahead of the pack...but also getting feedback from the team that they crave more structure, a slower pace of change, and more time to socialize decisions.