How Startups can overcome 'Illusion Of Hope'?

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Before we start discussing how to overcome 'illusion of hope', it is necessary for us to understand the meaning of it. A wise man in ancient Rome Marcus Licinius Crassus, (the warrior who executed Startacus) once used this term rightly when he was explaining a war scenario to his fellow ally. 

After Spartacus acquired a city in his province and freed all the slaves, Crassus decided to recapture the territory by attacking them and put Spartacus down. There was a day-long dramatic war and when he almost defeated the opponent, Spartacus changed his strategy and flew away. 

One of Crassus's ally asked him to send some warriors to follow Spartacus and catch him. In reply, he said all our soldiers are tired or dead. If we try to follow him now, we will never be able to. That's only an illusion of hope. 

Right thing said at the right time! 

Same sort of situations we face every day when we run a business. There are moments when we think we are just about to reach our destination but in the end, the real scenario turns out to be something else. As a result, we face frustration, hopelessness, negativity, and sadness. 

Is it so?

Yes, it is. Let's take an example. Maybe you are searching for a suitable candidate for your team and have decided to finish the task in one day. You searched for 50 similar profiles on Linkedin, send them messages and sit back thinking that at least 10 of them will reply within a day and next day and 3 of them will come for a meeting.

That's an illusion of hope. You might land up talking to 5 people and none of them will show interest. 

Let's take another example, you and your associate went to a meeting to re-initiate a contract. The client told you to generate a quarterly report and submit an excel sheet the next day by showing key areas where you helped him grow. You thought that's quite easy and asked your associate to prepare the report. He also nodded and said yes without telling you that he has to learn Pivot table first.

That's another illusion of hope! In the end, your associate came up with half report in the morning and you had to re-schedule the meeting. 

In both the cases, you ended up badly. 

How To Overcome Illusion of Hope?

 In the first case, there was a gap in your profile shortlisting. Did you shortlist the profiles by these parameters?

1) Tenure in the present company (not preferred if less than 6 months), 2) Current location (is it far from your office?) 3) Profile properly updated ( Not preferred if KRA is not clear) 4) Last activity 

If you would have checked, then maybe 30 were enough for your purpose. 

In the second case, you trusted your associate too much and misjudged his confidence when he nodded. 

In general, there are ways to overcome the illusion of hope. Basically, you have to stand between hope and hopelessness. Here are a few key ideas:

-Embrace the truth and choose to see things as they really are, not as you wish them to be.

-Develop problem-solving strategies, patience, and self-efficacy.

-Don't be stubborn! Focus on the healthy aspects of the situation, push positive emotions (transforms facts into experience), and drink in the fullness of this experience at the deepest level possible. 

-Change your perception from “fail” to “useful feedback or learning”. When we view things as failure, we do not maintain a positive thinking.

-Remain open and greet all of the thoughts, take feelings and emotions as “guests”, not permanent residents.

-Evolve through exploration and wisdom, knowing when to persevere and when to change plan.

-Trust that we are the conscious creators of our reality and that every experience is for our own growth and enlightenment, even when it seems like we are not getting what we want or what we need.

We at ValueCoders also used to face such situations and our developers and other teams got demotivated. However, after trying the above strategies and building such a culture helped us building amazing web and mobile apps and satisfy clients.