Advice I’ve received and given many times over the years has been a variation of: “maximize your options.” Seems intuitive that it should be better to have more, not fewer, choices as you’re weighing an opportunity or seeing your way out of a problem. The compounding effect of preserving optionality over time, though, is slowly dilutive to a set of convictions that matter. If at each fork you find yourself saying “yes”, even inaudibly, you’re also implicitly saying no to a commitment to any one thing at a deeper level. Reminds of the saying, “A friend to all is a friend to none.” Some ways I’ve heard this show up in the past week alone:
“I know you completely disagree with what she said but I wouldn’t make a point about it. She may be helpful to you later.”
“I wouldn’t focus on just design, it will pigeon-hold you. You want the ability to work on anything you see that you like.”
“Let’s not go out with a headline value proposition. If we leave it open-ended we can more easily narrow it later.”
“We don’t specifically state who our target audience is. We hope that anyone that sees value in what we’re doing will find it.”
With each individual choice it isn’t so weighty, but collectively it turns out a pretty destructive pattern. In a word, it’s shallow. At a values level, shallow in that you haven’t drawn a line in the sand for what you actually believe. In a strategic sense, shallow because in trying to be everything to everyone you’ve now spread yourself quite thin.
To be sure, preserving optionality is at times a very valuable strategic mindset — but we should disabuse ourselves of the reflex to default to it with each new challenge. Collecting options is at the expense of making a decisive bet that can advance things forward:
“You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.”
