The Competence Costume

Aicila: [00:00:00] this week I'm gonna talk about Monty Python. A friend of mine actually talked about it on their podcast, and it reminded me of one of the things I loved about Monty Python's Life of Brian. If you haven't seen it, I'm gonna describe the scene, and it will not do it justice, but stay with me.

Brian has been mistaken for a messiah. He didn't ask for it. He's trying to get rid of the crowd that's been following him, and at one point, he just turns around and faces them and says, "You are all individuals."

And the crowd responds in perfect unison, "We are all individuals." And then somewhere in the back, one lone voice shouts, "I'm not." I think about this in the context of founders and honestly, my own context too. The story we inherit growing up in the US especially, is almost entirely built around this idea of the lone genius. Um, the one who saw what no one else could see, who pushed through self-doubt and ridicule, came out on the other side vindicated.

Edison, Jobs, that founder who trusted their gut when [00:01:00] everyone in the room said no. And there's truth in that story, right? Vision is real, and commitment to your vision is important. And there's a particular loneliness of seeing something clearly that other people can't imagine. And it has a shadow side that I wanna talk about today because embedded in that mythology is a quiet lesson that needing other people is a liability, or simply that other people are a liability.

The purest form of capability is self-sufficiency. If you want something done right, do it yourself. You've heard that. I've heard it. Heck, I've even said it. And for a lot of founders, it's not just a phrase. It's running in the background of every decision. And it, it crops up every time delegation feels like a risk, every time collaboration feels like you're losing the thread.

And there's this need for control, and that feels like competence, right? Or self-sufficiency, but [00:02:00] it's really more fear wearing a costume. And I want you to sit with that for a minute, and don't make it mean anything about who you are or what you're doing because I don't think it's necessarily obvious, and I don't think it's an insult.

I think it's really worth looking at, honestly. I have watched this cost people not in dramatic collapses, but in the slow erosion of what was possible. The person who couldn't bring anyone in because no one would do it quite right. The founder who was technically capable of everything and in practice became the ceiling of their own vision.

It's something I struggle with, and being aware of when I am doing it just makes it more annoying when I see it, not easier to address. When I feel that particular exhaustion of being the person everything has to go through, when it stops being about standards and, ah, starts being a more about, I don't know, actually know how to let this go. And I don't really know what happens if I do let it go.[00:03:00]

I can see it. And I can still struggle to let things go, to be clear on when things do need my input and which things can be let go. And it feels like time management is the issue or focus is the issue when you're carrying everything yourself, but it's really not. You're not just tired. You're operating at a fraction of what's actually possible because you've made yourself the bottleneck.

I worked with this amazing founder several years ago who was so creative and capable and inspiring. Everybody loved working with them. And it became very clear that they were not really capable of creating a space in which other people could participate in their vision. And it was really sad to me because they had such a big vision.

It was clear the only way for it to really grow was for other people to be able to participate. And they just didn't know how to let that happen. In the energy equation, and if you're new here, the energy equation is the [00:04:00] framework I use to look at how we actually sort resource our work. Um, we talk about connection energy as a genuine resource-- as a genuine business resource.

This is not like a personality trait like, "Ooh, I like people," um, or a nice to have. It's really a fuel that compounds. Because collaboration doesn't just distribute the load. It generates something that solo effort genuinely can't. Ideas that arrive in conversation that wouldn't have arrived any other way, or the clarity that comes from explaining something to someone who asked the question you didn't think to ask yourself.

And then there's a momentum that comes from being witnessed, from someone else knowing what you're building and caring about whether or not it happens. When connection energy is low or when you've systematically cut off the things that would restore it, everything gets harder. Your creative energy stalls, your momentum drops, and you look and think, "I need better systems.

I need more discipline. I need to get focused," when what you actually need is to stop doing this alone. [00:05:00] So to go back to Brian and back to that person in the back, I have always loved that moment, not just as a punchline, but as a Sort of situational irony life commentary. The only person who actually understood their own sameness was the one who had to shout about it alone.

There's a-- That's a particular kind of self-awareness, the kind that doesn't make you feel better. It puts you on the spot, and it separates you from the very crowd you just recognized yourself in. There's a loneliness to that. The crowd gets to chant together, unaware, right in the middle of evidence they're missing, and the one person who sees it clearly is standing there by themselves, having just made it worse in some ways by saying so.

I think about that a lot in the context of founders who already know they're not actually lone geniuses, who can see the fiction clearly and still can't quite let go of it. And because knowing the thing and being able to act differently are not the same moment.[00:06:00]

Sometimes the awareness does just make you lonelier. Your vision can be yours and still require a whole web of people to become real. Those things aren't in conflict. The lone hero myth makes them opposites, and some part of you probably already knows that. The question is, what do you do with that knowledge when it feels like it's easier to keep carrying it alone? I'll say there's real relief in letting that go. There can be real relief in letting it go. Not every project needs to carry the full weight of your identity.

Not every decision needs to be yours. Not every role you're currently filling is actually yours to fill. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is become blissfully, comfortably a cog in the wheel.

One capable person inside a capable system doing your part well and trusting the whole can hold more than you could carry by yourself. It's not settling or shrinking. It's actually how things get built. So I'll leave you with this question, one that I keep coming back to. [00:07:00] What would you stop white-knuckling if you genuinely believed the system could hold it?

Sit with that.

Aicila: If any of this is landing for you and you want to actually look at how your energy is resourced right now, the Energy Equation Snapshot is a free assess-- free Energy Equation Snapshot is a free assessment over at bicurean.com/energysnapshot. It takes a couple minutes, and it will tell you things about how you're working that you probably already know but haven't named yet.

Thanks for being here. I'll see you next time.

Aicila: Thank you for tuning into business as unusual, remember, in this ever evolving world of modern business, it's not about fitting in.

It's about standing out. See you next time. Stay curious, stay innovative, and always keep it unusual.