CEOs, The Answer to This Question May Determine Your Success

As a CEO with an entrepreneurial mindset, I’m very comfortable trying 25 things, knowing that 23 of them might not work or could even be abysmal failures. The two that kind of work may eventually lead to making one of them really successful.
 
A month after discovering the two that work, I no longer remember the 23 that didn’t. They’re blocked out of my mind, as though they never happened.
 
In my company, I want to keep trying, iterating, and throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. I want us to invent, wander, and attempt, knowing that a large percentage of these opportunities won’t yield tremendous fruit.
 
With drive in the 99.9 percentile and a hyper-visual nature, understanding who I am and how I think, while unique to me, is not unique in the world. Yet, I’m not the sole person in any company.
 

Embracing Chaos Can Disrupt Employees’ Style

I’ve found that encouraging staff to try things, to fail forward, and to see failure as valuable and exciting creates chaos for those who require structure. Therein lies the difference between entrepreneurs and employees.
 
If you view this difference within your own business as only a conflict, you’re assuming an employee vs. entrepreneur scenario. However, if you realize the two differ in how they approach business, with employees favoring structure and entrepreneurs favoring chaos, you will be able to focus on how each one can complement the other.
 
In other words, you’d have an employee with entrepreneur scenario. But first, you need to recognize the reality of your current situation.
 
The table below illustrates some of the differences I have observed between employees and entrepreneurs. Of course, nothing in this world is absolute. Some employees may be more motivated than others. Some entrepreneurs may not be as driven.
 
The observations given are only meant to indicate some tendencies I’ve noticed.
 

Some Differences Between Employees & Entrepreneurs

             Employees                                      Entrepreneurs    

Whether you agree with everything I’ve presented or not, you probably do agree that differences exist within your own companies.
 
If it helps you, you might want to create a table of your own, based on your observations, to better understand where some opportunities may lie. Since I do not want my chaotic style to create unnecessary tension with employees, I am building an executive office around myself with individuals high in D, I, and follow-through.
 

 
You may recall D being dominant and I being influence from the DISC assessment. The DISC Theory was originated by William Moulton Marston, an American psychologist. S is for steadiness, and C is for conscientiousness.
 
My executive-office idea allows me to operate in my zone of genius or unique ability, while not creating instability within our organization. We acknowledge that downstream, project managers high in follow-through will support this structure.
 
I haven’t yet been able to disprove the inherent difference between someone with an entrepreneurial way of looking at the world and someone with more of an employee mindset. Both perspectives are incredibly important and impactful. You can’t have one without the other.
 

Chaos and Structure in Business

The difference comes down to the ability to thrive in chaos versus the ability to create structure that tames the chaos. That’s why encouraging a fail-to-succeed mindset within an organization can become unnerving to some.
 
In my opinion, employees who need heightened senses of structure find chaos to be the opposite of their wiring. While the term employee often carries a negative connotation, it shouldn’t. Structure and an employee’s role should both be viewed positively.
 
The trick is to balance an entrepreneur’s need for chaos with an employee’s need for structure.
 
I believe employees tend to try to be in good favor with their superior. That is, they strive to execute tasks, priorities, and initiatives well and will see them through to successful completion.
 
However, when tasks aren’t completed successfully, it’s often viewed negatively in most employees’ track records. This practice builds a resistance towards failure on their part.
 

The Need for Failure to Succeed

To me, though, failure can only be achieved after stopping an attempt over a long enough time period. Everything becomes solvable and possible. I’ll even go so far as to say probable. Therefore, if you decide to stop trying to find a solution and concede to failure, then you’ve failed.
 
To me, this is more of an employee or structure-type thought process versus the chaos that I like to operate in and that most other entrepreneurs may prefer. I think there’s a reason entrepreneurs, in general, embrace failure, in that most tend to be highly driven people.
 

 
In his book Driven, Dr. Doug Brackmann discusses a D2/D4 gene anomaly that highly driven people have. Meaning, driven people have “greater occipital dominance” in the brain. They are more visual, leaving the frontal lobe section of the brain to process more information and multiple variables all at once.
 
Genetically speaking, driven people process rewards differently in their brains. They have allele genes, DRD2-A1 and DRD4-7R, known as D2/D4, which make it more difficult for the reward centers of the brain to process dopamine. Hence, the driven don’t ever feel rewarded, when compared to the 85% to 92% of people who do not have these alleles, or mutations.
 
The research is not absolute, however, since even people with D2/D4 genes differ in the degree to which these genes affect them. Though, I believe there’s a correlation between this anomaly and the high Ds and Is of a DISC assessment.
 
Using a DISC assessment, if I see someone is high D and high I, I might assume they’re visual in nature.
 

The Visual Nature of High Ds and Is

If they are visual and not taking notes or not presented with something they can hold onto and look at, I am not connecting with them effectively.
From this assumption, we also want to enhance their drive for success and augment them with individuals or teams high in follow-through and structure.
 
When I see someone’s eyes jumping or skipping, it shows instability in that part of their ocular field, diminishing capacity. This understanding helps to set up rooms for meetings, positioning people where visual capacity might be diminished. This distinction between a chaos type of individual versus a structure type becomes crucial when structuring opportunities.
 
So far, I’ve not yet been able to disprove that those of us high in D and I on a DISC assessment likely have the D2/D4 gene anomaly, which then influences the ocular field, driving our processing and capacities. This dynamic becomes very interesting within organizations where people attempt to coexist, co-work, and co-thrive.
 

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

All founders set out to do something better. They want to stop exchanging time for money, needing more chaos in their systems. High D and I individuals don’t actually seek stability or structure, even if they initially think they do. Creating systems and processes feels confining to someone high in D who thrives in chaos. And when someone starts a business, they emerge as a leader in the process, stepping into a new level.
 

 
Transitioning through succeeding levels leads to the ability to produce almost at will. It allows us to keep repeating the cycle of growth and achievement…by embracing failure and using it to our advantage to succeed. Even so, we need some form of structure to support this chaos.
 
Therefore, we need employees to do the work they’re good at to allow us to do the work we’re good at. We need to stoke an environment of employees with entrepreneurs to not only use failure as a tool to obtain success, but to ensure there’s a system to support that success.
 
If you want to put the failure-to-succeed concept in action and work toward an employee with entrepreneur framework, Ryan Niddel is ready to help your entire company succeed.
 
Ryan is not only the CEO of MIT45, but he sits on the board of many successful companies. As a seasoned entrepreneur and business leader, he is passionate about helping guide those who want to improve their careers and personal lives. Learn more at ryanniddel.com.