The Pattern of Urgency

Life is a gamble at terrible odds - if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it ---------Tom Stoppard (British dramatist; Rosencrantz and Guildenstein are Dead, 1967)

If there is an upside to an obsession with mortality, it may be that it creates internal urgency. If you understand, deeply understand, that life can end at any moment, you may be more predisposed to make the most of one’s own. To take greater risks, to drive a little harder, to push to leave something tangible behind...

Love: The withholding of approval from a parent is common. In some instances, a parent does not merely withhold affection but actively doubts their child’s worth or ability. In either variation, this seems to produce a strong desire in the child to over-prove their ability or worth to compensate.

Status: Rather than entrepreneurs clustering in certain economic classes, the dominant pattern is change. Founders often lived through shifting fortunes, experiencing the mobility of status.

Myth: Often, entrepreneurs are burdened with a family’s expectations. They are tasked with redeeming past failures, restoring a lineage, or justifying the sacrifices of parents and siblings. From an early age, identity and destiny is thrust upon them.

Even adjusting for the different myths of love and status, it is striking how many of these entrepreneurs lost a parent early. Stan Shih (Acer), Amadeo Giannini (Bank of America), Larry Hillblom (DHL), George Eastman (Kodak), Fred Smith (FedEx), Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Aristotle Onassis (Olympic Maritime), Harland David Sanders (KFC), James Dyson, Jim Casey (UPS), all lost parents in childhood or adolescence. 

Konosuke Matsushita (Panasonic), Howard Hughes, Wang Chuanfu (BYD), Coco Chanel, and Leonardo Del Vecchio (Luxottica) were functionally orphaned. Many more lost a parent in early adulthood.

Ted Turner, founder of CNN, was tormented by his father in life and death. When Ted was twenty-four years old, his father agreed to sell a chunk of his business, then committed suicide the next day. It was up to the younger Turner to undo the sale and right the ship.

Larry Ellison of Oracle experienced a stranger kind of destabilization. Over dinner one night, when Ellison was around twelve years old, his parents shared: he was adopted. “That was it. They didn’t give me any details,” Ellison reported later. “It was like ‘Tonight we’re having meat loaf, and, by the way, you’re adopted.’” Ellison did not contend with the death of a parent, but in an instant, the narrative of life that stood beneath his feet was ripped away.

Perhaps the most powerful entrepreneurial myth is:

“Success is primarily the result of individual genius.”

In reality, entrepreneurial success is usually an interaction between individual capability, execution, networks, institutions, capital, technology, timing, market conditions, and luck.

This matters because the myth can create two opposite mistakes:

• For aspiring entrepreneurs: unrealistic expectations—"If I work hard enough, I must succeed."
• For successful entrepreneurs: excessive confidence—"I succeeded because I was smarter, so my judgment must always be right."

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