Becoming comfortable with discomfort

As small business owners, we're often faced with discomfort - risk, uncertainty, disappointment. We're taught that discomfort should be avoided, fixed, resolved. But what opportunities are we overlooking by rushing to fix every problem?

I've had countless sleepless nights while running my business. Not knowing how to resolve a problem I'm facing, feeling unable to bring up a difficult conversation with a client or cofounder, feeling out of my depth.

Avoiding discomfort

In his book Meditation for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman explains how our modern results-oriented culture trains us to eliminate discomfort as quickly as possible.

We’re so uncomfortable with discomfort that we’ll avoid it at all costs - with excessive planning, new tools or software, productivity ‘hacks’, shortcuts, asking for advice, or one of any number of avoidance tactics to peel ourselves out the sticky, unpleasant trap of discomfort.

This instinct to escape discomfort is understandable, but ultimately it works against us, especially when we are seeking innovation and new thinking.

Around 18 months ago, I was faced with the difficult decision when my digital agency was struggling financially. Should we cut costs, streamline, batten down the hatches and weather the storm? Or was it time to wind things down and step into the unknown?

My cofounder and I deliberated on this for a good while - stepping into complete unknown is always scary. The temptation to stick to what we’d always known was very real, even though I knew it wasn’t really making me, or us, happy anymore.

But eventually we made the decision to move on from the business in its current form. And in hindsight, it was absolutely the best decision.

Even though it meant stepping into the unknown, into uncertainty and discomfort, I needed to make space for something new. And, even though I couldn’t see it yet, that new thing would end up being something fantastic.

Quick fixes mask deeper issues

By reaching for a solution to our problems as soon as they arise - perhaps through another app, subscription, tool or framework - we're relying on some third party to both understand what we need and have the perfect solution for us.

We're outsourcing our problem solving.

By sitting with problems first, and avoiding the solutions marketed to us as quick wins, we better understand the underlying levers of the issue. We may realise that what we thought was the problem was actually just a symptom of something else.

I've written before about one way to practically explore this with the Five Whys exercise, which helps uncover deeper issues and underlying causes.

Learning to love problems

The urge to jump to a solution is natural - nobody likes problems.

I worked with a client a couple of years ago who were completely redesigning their customer onboarding process. When we began our work together, they already had a solution in mind and were holding on for dear life.

They'd already tried countless solutions - this must be the way to go, surely. But through some workshops and group thinking, we uncovered some issues with the solution, and I could see the client feel demoralised.

Rather than giving up, we decided to embrace the uncertainty - the not knowing what to do next. With this attitude, we threw caution to the wind and welcomed in even more problems (!) by running customer feedback sessions.

There was a fear that this would overwhelm, but it actually gave us clarity. It was challenging for the client to hear criticism about their products and services, but it quickly told them where they needed to focus.

The solution took a few more months to arrive at, but because it embraced real customer challenges, it was well received and adopted by stakeholders.

Experts in the "why"

After all, in business, problems are why we exist.

Solving problems for customers, colleagues, partners. The different hats we wear at work: manager, practitioner, fee-earner, mentor, facilitator - if there were no problems to address, would these roles even exist?

The problems are the roles. It's why someone's paying us, whether that's a client invoice, a customer purchase, or a payslip at the end of the month.

Moving towards problems means we learn more about the real state of things. We become experts in the "why." It means turning over the stones to peer at the creepy crawlies underneath. It gives us opportunity to learn, grow and adapt.

I’ve spoken recently about holding problems tightly but solutions loosely and this client learned to see the value in moving towards problems, without a specific solution in mind. That can be scary, but it's there where true innovation lies.

Innovation happens in the discomfort

When we're faced with discomfort we often have to get creative about a solution.

On a flight recently, I noticed that the neck pain for one passenger had become so unbearable while watching a movie on their phone, they had placed the device in a used sandwich bag and hung it from the hook on the seat in front.

The passenger could have caved and watched something on the in-flight entertainment system, but by not giving up, they were able to come up with a pretty innovative solution to watch their preferred movie. Even if it was probably not the viewing conditions that the makers of Dune Part 2 had in mind...

Finding ways to seek out problems, discomfort or uncertainty will build our creativity, adaptability and wisdom as business owners.

This can be by stepping away and reflecting, seeking out Unknown Unknowns, or coming to one of our events, where we learn tools and techniques to turn discomfort into innovation.

Next time you reach for a solution, think - is this really the best way forward, or am I just avoiding discomfort?