Giving up your ego — why you have to be “big” to feel “small” and survive in a start-up (and in life)
As a teenager, I was a quitter — given anything but the main part in a school play or if “demoted” to the B-team in sports, I threw the towel in.
I took massive affront to “not being the best.” I couldn’t bear to play second fiddle, having this cringingly warped sense of being better than I was and, honestly, better than other people.
I’m ashamed to say that I found it incomprehensible that others could be more suited or skilled than me without therefore thinking less about myself. Compounding this was a perceived embarrassment that such a “snub” would lead my peers to think that I was “less good” than I so desperately wanted them to believe I was. Nor could I see the value in persevering with something to earn respect or to achieve my goals in the longer term.
Fast forward to two and half years ago where I joined Europe’s fastest growing company, Deliveroo. It was a fledgeling start-up (Series D) on the cusp of big things. We were 500 people and I felt like a (relatively) big fish in a small (but ever-expanding) pond. That’s part of the beauty in joining an early-stage business — you get the chance to be at the start of something and a key cog in the engine. Sitting just four seats away from our CEO, I was lucky enough to get on board and help to build the rocket ship just as it began to really take-off. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1….
Lift off.
Since those heady, early days much has changed. Our hard work paid off — we’re more than eight times the size we were when I started and enjoying the vista from Google-esque offices. We have secured another two rounds of funding and, like our sales, our workforce has grown exponentially too. Whilst the start-up spirit remains, the business has evolved radically from the one I joined. Likewise, many of the faces are new too, a far cry from a time where everyone was on a first-name basis. And me? I’ve become a smaller fish part of a bigger team, a bigger office with bigger ambitions. The pond has now become a lake with lots more fish, many of whom are bigger than me. If all goes to plan, we’re en route to becoming an ocean.
As Molly Graham perfectly describes, the need to “give up your Lego[s]” in a start-up and this environment is “crazy hard”. Growing a business at such a pace has a unique set of challenges, both for the company, and the individuals working for it. As the business grows exponentially, so must we to keep pace. So, a person’s ability to adapt and their resilience to the ever-changing nature of the business, their role within it and the work they do is perhaps the most valuable asset we have to survive let alone thrive. My favourite saying is we have to “get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.” It is this capacity to manage the winds of change that were tested for me recently more so than at any time during my tenure so far….
The business decided to hire someone more senior to work above me — a Director of the region in which to date I have been “the Lead”. The thing about working at a startup as it grows, especially as one as ambitious a Deliveroo, is its need to change. New skills are required, fresh perspectives are acquired. These people will challenge your thinking and bring new ideas. But that is disruptive and hard to hear, especially when you have grown used to your role in the company and where it was headed.
One of our company values and one also close to my heart is to “be straightforward.” So, as someone who would describe themselves as ambitious, I won’t pretend it wasn’t an adjustment to someone more senior being brought in. Like many of us, I’ve shed blood, sweat and tears on the journey to getting the company to where it is today. And if my egotistical “chimp” had its way, the easy thing would’ve been to be bruised by this, to be disheartened. This is where the teenage Alice would jump ship.
But what kind of “personal development junkie” would I be if I let myself think like that now that I’m all grown up? Well, not a very good one, that’s what. So, I chose to “challenge my chimp”, to talk down my ego, and to see things differently. Constructively. That said, have there been moments of despondency? Of course, that is human. But I recognised that the choice was mine in how to respond to this challenge. I could be defeatist, or I could be positive.
I am not the only one who’s going through tumultuous feelings like these — start-up life is not for the faint-hearted and we’re all being tumbled around the emotional washing machine. And I know this piece could make me vulnerable — “hello, potential new boss one of these days reading this!”. But I guess I just want to say that when it feels bleak, when it gets too much and “crazy hard” and you just want to get off the rollercoaster — you are not alone. We all have those moments. Each of us is on our own crazy, exhilarating ride with its unique twists and turns. And remember, alongside the crazy is fun — crazy fun as we grow and learn and build something that we can be proud of whilst making friends for life along the way.
If we are to succeed in stepping outside of our comfort zone obstacles are inevitable, in start-ups and in life. But how we respond to them is within our gift — it’s actually the only thing that we ourselves control. The important thing is not what gets thrown our way, but how we practise what we need practice in. How we can be self-aware, how we can be humble and how we build ourselves up again when we stumble or stall. We choose the reality we live, we are the voices going around in our heads. We decide how we talk to ourselves and the picture we paint of a situation.
Can I be big enough to see this decision as something that was bigger than me and good for me even? Can I look myself in the eye and honestly say that I was ready for the level that the business needed this director position to be? Was I quite as good as I wanted, as I thought I was? Shit, maybe not.
And is that ok…is that ok with ME? I guess I’m coming to realise that finally it is. I am learning to be ok with myself, with or without the job title. I know that my happiness is my own making and not whether people think that I’m some shit-hot businesswoman, or, case in point, not. That despite the setbacks I am a good person and I have an incredibly lucky life.
And that, whilst this might’ve seemed like the biggest thing in the world to me, in the grand scheme of life it is, in fact, not, for me, or for the people I think actually give a shit about it. Because the truth is that people are too consumed with their own challenges to care too long or much about ours. They’re not obsessing about that stupid thing we said in a meeting or the fact that we have a huge spot on our forehead. Because they’re busy living in their own “spotlight”, worrying about their own spots and fuck-ups. So, you see, the size of our predicament is completely down to us and the way that we perceive it. We can make a big deal of something, we can kill ourselves over it. Or we can take a deep breath, accept and learn, and move on.
Perspective is a wonderful thing. Because when you zoom out from the pond, you find a whole ecosystem teeming with life. We decide what we expend energy on, where we put our focus, what we give value to. It’s only us who end up laser-focused on the negative stuff. Buddha said; “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” It’s fruitless. When we can have the humility to see that often it’s the smell of our own ego that’s fishy and realise that whatever the headlines might be today, will be tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, we can finally start to let go of all that baggage and feel free. Free to do our best, to try our hardest, find the “blessing in disguise” of our predicament and see that the future is bright and ripe with opportunities for growth.
