Can Ambition Take You To The Moon?

Yes, with some other ingredients

Would I know how to be a pilot of a spacecraft if I was plopped in the cockpit randomly one day? Or would I be able to solve a Rubik’s cube in 15 seconds if I was added to a speed competition vs. other pros? No. The skill sets needed to do both of those things are very specific. I could learn the skill sets, but I don’t current have them.

I think this same dynamic exists in business. If someone plopped me in the seat of a CEO’s chair of a 1,000 employee company, I would run that company into the ground. If I become a sales rep at a B2B SaaS company tomorrow and was tasked to make 120 calls today and get 20 accounts on board, I probably wouldn’t meet quota. And if you asked me to sit in a room to negotiate a high stakes sale of a large company, you know I would leave that room, without a sale or 2nd conversation.

I think because “business” is a softer skill than mechanical engineering or Rubik’s cube solving, people forget that there are massive gaps between business people, which lead to very different outcomes eventually. I often catch myself thinking I can do things in business that I haven’t proven I can do. I think I can do these things because I believe in myself. There is a line though where at some point, you just have to know how to do something, and if you don’t know how to do it, you take the time to learn (and no amount of self confidence can solve for this). Your ambition can’t take you to the moon alone. Maybe that lesson can be applied inside of business as well.