The Biggest Danger in Both Learning and Startups: Falling Off The Rails

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One of the biggest dangers in both learning and startups is falling off the rails.

This unfortunately happens all the time in college math classes, where each weekly problem set might have just a handful of really long problems, each taking like an hour or more.

The hope is that students will somehow self-scaffold across the large gaps in knowledge – but the reality is that many students can’t build those bridges on their own. So they just fall off the rails.

The same failure mode also shows up in startups.

Founders of growing companies can’t be hands off. The real danger isn’t micromanaging, it’s letting things fall off the rails.

Early-stage companies need founders in founder mode – in the weeds, actively keeping everybody aligned – not manager mode, which you might see at big stable organizations.

But here’s the interesting part.

Yeah, keeping things on the rails requires relentless communication, but it’s also important to often let that communication flow out of scope.

Every innovation, every solved problem requires relevant background context, and you often don’t know what the full context is beforehand.

Staying on the rails requires context sharing and overscoping limits context sharing.

So how do you force things to stay on the rails, yet allow conversations to flow out of scope?

Discussed here: Math Academy Podcast #6 Part 2: On The Rails and Out Of Scope

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