Metrics matter in a startup. Measure the wrong thing and you will be flying blind without even knowing it. Measure the right thing and you’ll be able to optimize for real and lasting growth. Although ‘measure and iterate’ is the mantra of the day, startup founders are ignoring one metric that is arguably a clearer indicator of success that any other metric out there.
This metric is a key indicator of startup success of failure. Even more telling, it can be a reliable predictor of founder success.
It’s the difference between failure and thriving.
It’s the difference between good and great.
It’s the difference between genius and insanity.
What is this all important metric? It is what author and speaker Ray Johnston calls the Hope Quotient (HQ). In his book, The Hope Quotient:Measure It. Raise It. You’ll Never Be The Same, Ray makes the case that Hope is the singular most important metric that determines a person's success or failure. He uses seven key indicators to calculate a person’s Hope Quotient. The book is a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in learning more about how HQ can affect performance and indicate a founder's success.
One question you are probably asking yourself, amongst others, is Why? Why is hope so important? Here are four reasons why you should take your HQ just as seriously, if not more so, than your IQ or Emotional Quotient(EQ). Full disclosure: These four headlines were taken from the book Hope Quotient by Ray Johnston.
Hope Liberates
Entrepreneurship is a road littered with failure. We’ve all failed at something before. If you aren’t failing, you aren’t creating fast enough. Failure can even sometimes be something of a medal of honor that founders wear. However, failure sucks. It hurts. It blows the air right out of your sails. It feels like getting punched in the gut repeatedly without end. You know what I’m talking about if you’ve been through it.
How do you prevent the scars from past failures from clouding your judgment in future startup pursuits? Hope. Hope can be defined as an eager expectation of good in a future endeavor. Hope frees you from the past and allows you to refocus on what can be, not what was or is. Hope liberates.
Hope Motivates
You just got off the phone with the company who was about to be your biggest client. They delivered some bad news. They are going to pass on your scrawny little startup and go for the behemoth incumbent. What’s worse is you had promised your engineers that the deal was done. That they would get paid. Your runway was looking nice and long and then all of a sudden a bomb hit and shrunk it to nothing.
This scenario, or something very similar to it, happened to Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator. He told the story in the famous 2014 Stanford course How To Start A Startup. At his previous startup they were about to lose a big client to an incumbent. Actually, according to the client, the deal was already lost. What did Sam and his team do? They got on a flight over to the client, sat in their waiting room, refused to leave until they got a meeting with someone from the firm. They got that sale back! Why did they go that far? They had a high expectation of a great outcome. Their hope meter was off the charts to the extent that it motivated them to go to lengths that many wouldn’t have gone. Hope motivates.
Hope Initiates
Steve Jobs wanted a glass screen for the first iPhone. There was only one problem. The kind of glass he wanted didn’t exist in production anywhere in the world. I can imagine the look on Apple’s engineers faces when Jobs told them what he wanted. Engineers work with what is known. They are not fond of bending the laws of physics. You could say that it’s a taboo in their world. We all would agree that Steve Jobs was a visionary genius of unparalleled proportions. Unmatched in so many ways. However, have you ever wondered how he could be so bullish about the impossible being possible? A high Hope Quotient will do that to you.
Hope is the catalyst for inspired ideas that can challenge the status quo. Do you want to channel Steve Jobs creativety for your own company? Work on your HQ. When you and your team are high on hope, you unleash a level of creativity that is reserved for the crazy ones who believe everything is possible.
Hope Activates
Raising kids is an adventure. You clean the house, blink, and it’s all a mess again. Do that three more times and you learn to live with the mess for a little while longer. Your hope in the house staying clean is near zero. You give up. There is a deactivation that happens in your mind.
There is talent in your organization or startup that is going unused. The problem isn’t your organizational structure, though a bad structure can sometimes slow the creative process. The problem is with the HQ of your team member. How have they done with their past attempts? How did you or their direct report react? If you want an organization full of people who are relentless at taking action you need to focus on creating a culture of crazy hope. Hope activates. Hope-filled people don’t sit and do nothing. They act at breakneck speed. They have a knowing that the impossible is possible if they act.
Hope can feel like a fleeting emotion sometimes but it can be measured, increased and leveraged for incredible startup success. Do you know your HQ?
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