Chapter 6 Turbulence Ahead

How do you know when to quit and when to push through a problem? It's always a mammoth challenge to separate your desire to make something work from the probability that it will or won't. Of course, the more you put into a project, the more likely it is to succeed. But some efforts will never pan out, no matter how much time, money, or sweat is invested. The most scientific answer I've found is to listen to your gut and look at your alternatives. Essentially, you have to negotiate honestly with yourself. Do you have the fortitude to push through the problems in front of you to reach a successful outcome, or are you better off taking another path?

If you decide to quit, make sure that you do it well. That is easier said than done. I've seen people quit gracefully and others quit so clumsily that they leave a huge crater in their wake. As discussed earlier, you are likely to bump into the same people again and again in life, often in unexpected ways. This alone is reason enough to make sure that when you quit, you do so with careful thought about the consequences for those around you. Besides the impact that quitting gracefully might have on you later, it is just the right thing to do. You can never rationalize quitting in such a way that you hurt your colleagues, friends, or former business.

A colleague told me about his assistant, who was doing a terrific job. He gave her great reviews and spent a lot of time talking with her about her career path within his group. She made it clear that ultimately she hoped to move into a different field, and my colleague was supportive of this. In fact, he told her he would be delighted to serve as a reference for her anytime. With this as a backdrop, my colleague couldn't have been more surprised when his assistant came in one day and gave two weeks' notice. The team was in the midst of a huge project, the deadline three weeks away. She was going to leave one week before the project was completed, putting the entire team in a very difficult position. My colleague asked her several times if she would consider staying one more week to help him get to the end of the project, which involved dozens of people directly and several thousand indirectly. She refused, saying, "I know you're going to be unhappy that I'm leaving no matter when I go, so I decided to do what I want."  My colleague felt as though he'd been kicked in the stomach. It was nearly impossible to fill in the holes she left during the last week of the project, and everyone worked around the clock to try to fill the void. All those who worked with her will remember that decision. Despite the fact that she did a great job while she was with them, the damage she did to her reputation during the last weeks of her employment dwarfed all the positive things she had done in prior years.

In sharp contrast, I've seen others quit jobs with remarkable style. Even if they were leaving because the job wasn't a good match, the way in which they left made such a positive impression that everyone involved would be pleased to give them a glowing recommendation at any time in the future. They provided enough notice to fill any gaps, they took the time to put their work in order so someone else could pick up where they had left off, and they even offered to help with the transition. They mastered the art of quitting with grace.

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Instead of quitting, there is often a huge bonus for working through a tough situation. Sometimes this involves figuring out how to collaborate with a challenging person, how to succeed with limited resources, or how to fix an unexpected technical problem. A great example is Debbie Sterling, the founder of GoldieBlox, which makes construction toys for girls to help them learn engineering. She was inspired to launch this company based on her own lack of exposure as a girl to the power of engineering to solve important problems in the world. After spending countless hours scaling the scrappy startup, beginning with a very successful Kickstarter campaign, she and her small team finally reached escape velocity by raising a million dollars to help them develop the product.

Then, using grassroots marketing, they won the right to air a commercial during the 2014 Super Bowl, which resulted in huge exposure and enthusiasm. Orders for the GoldieBlox products began pouring in, and they started shipping tens of thousands of units of their toys. Unfortunately, things did not go smoothly, and scaling so fast came at a price. The physical blocks in the product turned out to have a problem—they didn't fit together properly. The company received complaints from customers, telling them the toy was flawed. This was a devastating blow to Debbie and her team. After so much work and success, they were hit with this huge failure. What to do?

They decided to take apart the problem and solve it as an engineer would do. After dealing with the manufacturing issues and fixing the blocks, they needed to rebuild trust with their disappointed customers. They did this by literally sending a million new blocks to all of their customers, explaining the mistakes they had made and how they had fixed them. Most important, they wrote a personalized letter to each child from the fictional character in the game, Goldie, explaining that engineers don't always get it right the first time, but that doesn't mean that you should give up. They explained what had happened and shared the engineering drawings of the old and new blocks. This negative experience turned into a positive learning opportunity for the business and for their customers. In fact, they turned this failure into a powerful opportunity to gain more trust and support for the company and the product.

This example demonstrates how this dance works. Debbie had to change her own emotional response from deep disappointment to optimism, she had to change the conversation with her customers from one of frustration to one of appreciation, and she had to change her relationship with the overall problem by seeing it as an opportunity.

This theme comes up again and again when listening to those who have been successful, whether they have faced big or small challenges. They are willing to try lots of things and are confident that some of their experiments will lead to great outcomes. But they also recognize that there will be potholes along the way. This approach can be used for big and small challenges. The following story was told to me by a friend: There was a man who appeared to have endless luck with women. He wasn't particularly charming, funny, smart, or attractive, so it was quite a mystery. One day my friend asked him how he managed to have such a steady flow of women in his life. He confided that it was simple—he asked every attractive woman he met for a date, and some of them said yes. He was willing to take his share of rejections in return for a handful of successes. This brings the lesson to its basest level. If you get out there and try lots of things, you're much more likely to find success than someone who waits around for the phone to ring.