Interlude - Index of

126 | Grown-Up Company
a second problem area until you’ve got a solid and successful
solution for the first one.
Notice how the strategy keeps flipping, from broad to narrow
to broad. As an early start-up, you think broadly about
what problems you can solve. After you’ve gained experience
with some early customers, you choose just one group to focus
on—a very narrow strategy. After you’ve succeeded there and
have more resources to invest, you broaden out again.
“Don’t cross the street by yourself,” you tell your fouryear-old
son, but a few years later you say, “It’s okay to cross
the street by yourself.” It’s not that the early strategy was
wrong and then you fixed it; the point is that different stages of
development require different strategies, and often the appropriate
strategy at one stage is the opposite of the strategy for
the previous stage.
This recognition is important when it’s time to drive
change through an organization. People often resist change,
and I think part of the resistance comes from a feeling that if
it’s necessary to do something different, then they must have
been doing something wrong before. People don’t like to
admit that they were wrong. Never mind worrying whether
things were all screwed up before—it’s much healthier to focus
on what strategy is best for now.