Act different.
Pattern-breaking founders don’t just Think different; they Act different
The Pattern Breakers book is now available wherever you buy your books.
We've discussed why radically different ideas are vital for pattern-breaking startups. But great ideas alone aren't enough for outlier success—not even those with the most powerful insights. For ideas to accomplish their intended radical change, founders must bring others along into the future they see.
Asking people to abandon the familiar for an uncertain tomorrow is provocative. It unsettles most. Just claiming to be different won’t do if you act like everyone else or play by the rules set by others. Pattern-breaking founders don't succeed by blending in or sticking to the usual paths. They persuade others to adopt new habits through their pattern-breaking actions.
How Pattern Breakers Act Differently
Pattern breakers draw a stark dichotomy between the world as it exists and the world as it could be, urging us to journey to a different future with them. Because their ideas and actions are so radical, they often face the fierce resistance of a world reluctant to change. Even their closest advisors and family try to bring them back into the mainstream. Critics scorn them, incumbent corporations try to defeat them, and sometimes governments even try to outlaw them. But they forge ahead, driven by a purpose far beyond conventional acceptance.
In studying pattern-breaking founders, it can be tricky to pinpoint common ways they defy norms to achieve their goals. Many tales of pattern-breaking actions are unique like snowflakes. Brian Chesky sold cereal to fund Airbnb before they could raise money. Justin Kan and Emmett Shear sold their startup Kiko on eBay before launching Justin.tv. The Lyft founders launched an illegal service in San Francisco, knowing they would need to get the laws changed. Despite the variety of their daring and creative actions, I've noticed three forms of pattern-breaking actions that contribute to their success: movements, storytelling, and disagreeableness.
Movements are the mechanism that pattern-breaking founders use to move people to a different future of their design. This involves clearly distinguishing between the world that is and the world that can be. It also requires focusing on and enlisting the right co-conspirators—the first true believers who form the heart of your early start-up team, customers, and investors.
Effective movements require bold, decisive, and sometimes idiosyncratic leadership. Powerful storytelling motivates the right early believers to support and champion the cause.
Any breakthrough startup defies current norms. Grit, the willingness to choose unconventional methods others avoid, and even a touch of disagreeableness are essential for success. Just as ideas fail when they fall into the comparison trap, startups won't achieve their mission by conforming to traditional methods. To succeed, they must avoid the conformity trap.
Let’s briefly describe each of the elements of Pattern Breaking Actions, starting with movements.
Movements
A movement is a group of people joining forces to redefine the future.
Creating a movement starts with defining a higher purpose—one that extends beyond just the desire of a company to make and sell better products. For example, Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the move to sustainable energy, not just to make better cars than Ford or Toyota. Their mission doesn't even mention cars.
Defining a higher purpose attracts co-conspirators, beginning internally with team members, then spreading externally to early customers and investors. As more and more people join the cause, the movement takes shape and alters how people in society behave.
Movements are a different way to compete against the status quo because they transform the greatest strengths of incumbent institutions into their greatest weaknesses—the way judo masters use their opponents’ size and strength against them.
Just as great ideas are hard to formulate, movements are hard to initiate. The incumbent institutions that dominate the present fight hard against movements—understandably. Their continued dominance—in fact, their continued existence—usually depends on maintaining the status quo. They fight to preserve it using all the powers at their disposal, including the media, lobbying, and lawsuits.
Sometimes, big companies can spark movements, like when Apple launched the iPhone or Amazon unveiled Amazon Web Services. Regardless of a company's size, successful movements bring the same result: they overthrow the old ways and set new patterns in their place.
As movements expand, their impact shifts from influencing a small group to affecting the majority. What was once dismissed or rejected is now embraced as the norm. It becomes the story that’s accepted by the mainstream.
Speaking of stories, it’s useful to consider a vital component of creating movements: storytelling.
Storytelling
Storytelling persuades early believers to join a movement.
The ability to tell compelling stories is crucial to achieving pattern-breaking success. Storytelling isn't just “marketing”; it's essential for recruiting early employees, convincing investors, and attracting early customers.
The hero’s journey is an effective storytelling framework. It has three parts: the hero (your audience), the world as it is, and the world as it could be. The hero, with a mentor's guidance, goes on an adventure, faces challenges, and is transformed. Crucially, in a startup, the founder is the mentor, not the hero. The founder’s job is to inspire and lead early investors, customers, and employees from the present world to a future one. In this new world, these various types of co-conspirators step into the role of heroes on their own journeys, undergoing profound transformations.
A story must vary based on the audience. Customers, investors, journalists, and potential employees all have different motivations and respond to their own type of narrative.
Consider Lyft's story. Founders Logan Green and John Zimmer positioned themselves as mentors. They connected with early riders by addressing frustrations with unreliable taxis and scarce parking. Lyft's story was a better transportation experience, symbolized by an easy-to-use ride-hailing app and the friendly pink mustache on cars. For investors, the story focused on potential financial returns from achieving network effects.
Disagreeableness
Disagreeableness can be an asset, both in the development of breakthrough ideas and the execution of movements to actualize them.
Disagreeableness aids founders in saying no when necessary, protecting bold ideas from dilution. It also helps counter the frequent rejection startups face. Resilience, fueled by unwavering conviction, is crucial for pattern-breaking founders to overcome negativity.
People often praise business leaders who keep the peace, build consensus, avoid conflict, or promote stability. But breaking patterns requires leaders who “act different” – who demand the best from their teams and themselves. Transformative leaders like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos act differently; they thrive on confrontation, challenging the status quo and fostering high expectations. They forge strong teams and exceptional results by demanding excellence rather than harmony. Those most committed to greatness are motivated not by agreement but by confronting hard, meaningful challenges.
Disagreeableness also shields against conformity. Societal pressures can trap founders into playing by the rules of the status quo, stifling breakout success. Pattern-breaking startups like Lyft defied norms when it illegally launched its service. They knew that seeking permission from the San Francisco government before launching would have meant certain failure. Instead, they built something that they knew would improve the lives of city residents before engaging in a discussion with the city on how to make it a permanent reality.
Disagreeableness can go too far. Extreme or gratuitous disagreeableness is damaging. Pattern breakers should balance authenticity and high expectations while avoiding abrasiveness that crosses into cruelty. Some succeed without mastering this balance, but their success often comes despite this flaw, not because of it.
Genuine authenticity means holding firm to convictions without using disagreeableness as an excuse for counterproductive behavior.
What questions does this raise for you?
There’s much more to cover about starting movements, storytelling, and mastering effective disagreeableness. I want to hear your thoughts, questions, and doubts:
Have you considered your startup as a movement? How does it create a conflict between the interests of your co-conspirators and the majority?
Have you fully harnessed storytelling to ignite the passions of your early believers? Have you made them the rightful heroes of their own journeys? Have you resisted making your startup the hero?
How do you find balance between being disagreeable versus going too far? What’s the best way to be authentic while refusing to compromise your mission?
See you next week when we drill down on movements.
Courage.
Having read, or listened to, almost everything you’ve published / podcasted since your interview w/ Shane Parrish in 2021 this post stands out. Instead of my usual response of, ““how do I apply what I’ve learned” I got mind reeling curious.
I asked, “What does it require to actually BE a pattern breaker; to undo years of training and be bold?”
For the archetypical “bad boy” founder whose mathematical wizardry complimented his classroom antics, his bold confidence as a founder is built on years of being rewarded, (or not punished too much!), for behavior that was just outside the norm. I begrudge him nothing and am a bit envious of his unfettered freedom to fly.
But what about the rest of us, what does it take for us to make bold moves for our companies even when it goes against years of socialization to do otherwise?
My hypothesis is that it is “Courage” or, more specifically, “Courage born of Conviction”
Socialization can have an outsize impact on how someone operates in the world and for me, a vintage female founder, it triggered a decision to squelch my childhood reputation as “a brain”, “bossy” and “independent” to just “fit in” for all the reasons you might imagine. (In hindsight - not the smartest move!)
Although I’d wanted to build my own company since I was sixteen I went the conventional, expected, corporate route. I became the quintessential intrapreneur and glowed with pride when the President of a company I worked for said, “What makes you so great is your ability to lead people who don’t report to you and you’re not afraid to get fired”. I realized later I may have been in corporate but I didn’t really fit in!
I’ve now launched my company, (funded mostly by my corporate “winnings”), and even before I read your post, I knew its success depended on my ability to break free of the chains of other’s expectations.
With respect to my hypothesis, and as a sample size of one, I can attest that the ONLY thing that gives me the strength to continuously push into the unknown and be comfortable being uncomfortable is my passion for the problem we’re solving. It is the Courage of my Conviction that lets me break the patterns and do what is both unexpected and right. It is also, as I’m finding, an exhilarating, if tumultuous, journey.
Writing this response also took me out of my comfort zone so you can be assured your insights today resonated; thank you.
NOTE: For my own purposes I have had to replace the word “disagreeable” with the phrase “unafraid of other’s opinions”. If others think that makes me disagreeable, that is their opinion but it is not who I am.