Get carried away

Today I had a refreshing conversation at work:

(For context, I work at an investment company)

Me: “We’re looking at investments into this space. We got a good co-investment partner lined up and there’s good market momentum.

But I struggle with not getting carried away.”

Boss: “Why?”

Me: “I’m afraid of not thinking critically if I’m feeling too optimistic.”

Boss: “No! Get carried away. Otherwise no one’ll see the full potential.”

He’s right.

To get somewhere, someone has to be optimistic.

Someone has to believe in it.

Most progress is because some crazy optimist pushed in one direction and enough people jumped on the train.

You know…

Jobs

Musk

Gates

If they didn’t believe, a lot of things we take for granted today wouldn’t exist.

I’m not Musk, but you can scale the idea all the way down to what to eat for dinner.

And one more thing:

It’s scary being the one believing (or pushing for something), because your head’s on the line if it fails (figuratively, I hope).

Naturally, you want to minimize the risk of losing your head.

So the optimist needs a pessimist around. Or maybe not a pessimist, but someone asking the right questions.

For every winning optimist, there are 13 losers. Those who believed in the wrong thing.

Having someone asking the right questions before it’s too late, reduces the risk of ending up among the losers.

But this time, that’s not the role I’m playing.

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