When First Responders train to deal with all kinds of casualties, they obviously learn all manner of skills. One stands out among the others, and it’s a philosophy more than a skill: think before you act. Applying that to your tech startup – or really any business – can help prevent mistakes and save time in the long run.
Why Thinking Matters
Let’s stay on the subject of emergency responses for a moment. To be precise, the entire approach starts before thinking and acting. What most first responders learn from their instructors goes something like this: stop, breathe, think and act.
The same approach works for startup founders. Developing an idea into a business can be a breathtakingly fast journey. Generally, several things take priority at once, and it’s only too easy to feel the pressure to act or react at high speed. If that’s what you do, you may feel like you’re getting things done, but you’re also increasing your potential for mistakes. Granted, mistakes can be corrected, but those corrections are often time-consuming.
Thinking before you act or react to a specific situation, question, or challenge will help you react correctly the first time you try. It may take a few more minutes to consider your reaction, but drawing the correct conclusion straight away will save time in the long term.
How Can You Apply This Philosophy to Your Tech Startup Journey
In our experience, there are a few different scenarios here:
- When you feel that you are rushing to make a decision, deliberately take a step back and pause. Ask yourself why you are rushing and if you’re truly comfortable making that decision right now.
- When you get the idea that there is a deadline looming, check whether that deadline is self-imposed and changeable or whether it is something you can’t change. Take HMRC deadlines, for example. Those are deadlines you can’t move, but many others are flexible.
- When you are working against the clock to finish something because it should be done, stop and reconsider if it really needs to be done right now. Would the quality of your work or the soundness of your decision benefit from a pause?
In the context of tech startups, choosing thinking over acting in these scenarios has several benefits:
- Decisions made in a rush often need corrections later. The more weight a decision carries, the greater the impact on your business. Stop and think before taking that decision.
- Self-imposed deadlines are great to keep things on schedule. However, sometimes life intervenes, and you need to adjust that deadline. Don’t be afraid to make those adjustments in favor of the quality of your work.
- Few of us deliver our best work under extreme pressure. We may appreciate a deadline to keep us focused, but screeching up against one rarely delivers great results. If at all possible, give yourself more time to deliver better work or make a more considered decision for the future of your startup.
Why are we talking about this right now? Because this blog is the result of exactly that kind of decision. We are working on what we believe will be an exciting blog touching on key elements to consider whilst navigating the crucial steps of the tech startup journey.
The plan was to have it all ready to publish this month, but the truth is we can make it better with a little more time. So, as a self-imposed deadline for publishing, we can move it by a month and get you to think about taking time instead. We believe that the improved quality of our work is worth the delay. You can be the judge of that in a month.
In the meantime, we hope your 2023 is off to a great start. As always, don’t hesitate to get in touch with financial questions or queries relating to startups. We’re happy to help and hope you’ll join us for next month’s blog!