Article -
Turning the Key Too Far

Turning the Key Too Far

One evening while away, I returned to my hotel room to drop off a few things before heading out to meet friends for dinner. I got to my door, turned the key and let myself in. Pretty standard.

The key opened the door perfectly. The problem came when I tried to remove it from the lock. It wouldn't release. It would turn to open the door and lock, open the door unlock, but I couldn't remove the key from the keyhole.

It wouldn't budge.

My fiancé tried.
Nothing.
I tried again.
Still nothing.

After a moment of bafflement and a brief discussion, we decided this was probably a job for someone who actually worked there, so my fiancé went in search of the manager, while I sat, half in the room, half in the doorway, keeping watch and keeping the door open.

The manager arrived, took hold of the key, gave it a jiggle and, for a moment, it looked as though the key might be spending the rest of the evening living permanently in the door.

Then suddenly, and with surprise to all of us, and with ease, it released. The three of us looked relieved.

At that point we could have assumed it was a strange one-off and gone about our evening. Instead, and admittedly with some risk management perspective, we decided to test it. The manager locked and unlocked the door several more times. Before long, a pattern emerged.

The lock wasn't broken.
The key wasn't faulty.
The key simply needed to be turned exactly one and a half turns.

Not one turn.
Not two turns.
One and a half.
Any more or any less and the key became stuck.

The solution wasn't more force. It wasn't more effort. It was understanding the mechanism.

Watching this unfold, I found myself thinking about business owners and leaders.

Many of the founders I work with are intelligent, capable and deeply committed to doing good work.

They're also carrying something else:

• A fear of rejection.
• A fear of disappointing people.
• A fear of being criticised.
• A fear of being seen to get something wrong.

For many people, those fears didn't begin in business, no, not at all. They began much much earlier, when we learn what brings praise and what brings disapproval, and how disapproval doesn't feel safe.

So we lean into that. We keep people happy to avoid or reduce the potential for conflict.
We got a little dopamine hit when we received praise. That told us we were doing something right, and if we were doing something right, we might just be worthy of love.

And that's how many of us ended up believing we're only valued for what we can do.
And of course, that habit that pattern it doesn't just stay in childhood. We carry it with us all the way through, into our relationships, our day-to-day lives, what we put our efforts into and our businesses.

Like a founder who was ready may spend another week with refining their offer before they feel courage enough to launch it and release it into the world.

Like a leader or a line manager may avoid or delay a difficult conversation because they know that it may not be received well and they don't want to upset someone.

A coach can create another workbook or highly-tailored niche strategy system.

A consultant can look at things from another angle and create another layer of analysis, and we all know what paralysis from analysis can feel like. Of course, we get stuck.

A business owner who understands that things aren't getting the traction that they want to feel they deserve may consider lowering their prices, or if they used to over-delivering, they will be tempted to put in extra hours, add extra value, enable extra contact time when their contact time is already scarce and competing with other responsibilities.

On the surface, these behaviours can look sensible, responsible and conscientious.

"I'm doing this because at least I'm doing something."

But underneath, these activities are often attempts to avoid rejection. The thing is, people-pleasing rarely creates the safety we're hoping for. Think about it. How often has that felt like a win-win?

That appeasement, that fear of rejection, it often encourages us to play smaller than our competency, and capability, and years of honing and polishing deserves. We can end up becoming overcautious, and more risk-averse than is helpful.

It's like when I work with people who have OCD. They are the most amazing risk assessors.
Potential problem - flagged.
Initial potential impact - check.
Mitigations and Plan B's and Plan C's - it's all in there.
Likelihood of it happening in the first place? Silence...

We can spend so much longer from preparing than taking action and so much more time refining than releasing, so we don't get that feedback, so we can't make that continuous improvement and those fine-tuning adjustments because we get scared of Step One. Without a Step One there can be no momentum.

Much like that hotel key, there is often a sweet spot - too little preparation and the work may not be ready. Too much preparation and we create complexity, delay and exhaustion, and we may lose focus of what our initial intention was, so we can put a lot of time and effort into something that's just not going to land right.

Too little consideration and we make avoidable mistakes, which is why it's always good to scenario test and best learned from other peoples mistakes as well as your own. Too much consideration and we become stuck analysing possibilities instead of making decisions, and so nothing happens.

The answer is rarely found at either extreme.
The answer tends to be found somewhere in the middle - that space of 'good enough'.

Clear enough.
Useful enough.
Strong enough.

That point where we stop trying to earn approval through endless effort and start trusting ourselves to take the next step.

The key that evening didn't require more force, or more determination, or another twenty attempts.

It simply required the right amount of movement. No additional embellishment. Exactly one and a half turns. No more. No less.

I suspect that many business owners could benefit from the same lesson.

The next time you find yourself adding another feature, another revision, another qualification, another week of preparation or another attempt to make everyone happy, another quick win dopamine hit that makes you feel good in the short term but doesn't move you closer to where you want to or need to be, it may be worth asking:

Am I improving this?
Or am I simply turning the key too far?

This is often where the real work begins.

The real work is understanding what is driving that behaviour in the first place, because when a founder or strategic leader learns to recognise their fears, their assumptions and the old patterns sitting beneath their decisions, they gain something far more valuable than another business tactic.

They gain clarity, insight and choice, and from that place, both the person and the business can begin to grow more sustainably.