In this paradigm-shifting episode, Scott Ritzheimer shares why rejecting "foolish consistency" unlocks founder greatness across all stages. If you struggle with rigid processes killing innovation or chasing shiny objects derailing vision, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why foolish consistency is the hobgoblin stifling your breakthroughs

- What adaptive leadership separates great founders from the pack

- How continuity of vision beats rigid methods every time

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stages 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Scott helped start nearly 20,000 new businesses and nonprofits and with his business partner started led their multimillion-dollar business through an exceptional and extended growth phase (over 10 years of double-digit growth) all before he turned 35.He founded Scale Architects to help founders and CEOs identify and implement the one essential strategy they need right now to get them on the fast track to Predictable Success.

Want to learn more about Scott Ritzheimer's work at Scale Architects? Check out his website at https://www.scalearchitects.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

Take the Founder's Evolution Quiz Today

If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.

Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again

to the Start scale and succeed podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a

founder, and today, we've got another solo episode for you on

something that I think is a very interesting topic. I want to

open up with one of my favorite quotes from the one and only.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, this comes from self reliance, and I want

to read it off to you. He says, A foolish consistency is the

hobgoblin of little minds adored by little statesmen and

philosophers and divines. With consistency, a great soul has

simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with the

shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and

tomorrow, speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again,

though it contradict everything you said today. Ah, so you shall

be misunderstood. Is it so bad then to be misunderstood?

Pythagoras was misunderstood Socrates and Jesus and Luther

and Copernicus and Galileo and Newton and every pure and wise

spirit that ever took flesh to be great is to be misunderstood.

I love this quote. It's it's one that just always kind of lingers

in the back of my mind, and I think it's one that describes

founders and what founders do so well, founders see through that

foolish consistency. They believe, from the very get go

that there must be a better way. Founders help organizations

avoid what we call a stage called treadmill for

organizations, where form starts to edge out function. FaceTime

is more important than getting things done. Checklists become

more important than whatever they were there for in the first

place. As a As humans, we kind of worship consistency. The

World conspires toward it, and I believe that one of the biggest

gifts that founders bring to the world is the opportunity to

break from that consistency. But, but Emerson's quote doesn't

say consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, little minds. He

says a foolish consistency. And one of the things that's really

struck me, just to peel back the curtain a little bit on my world

as I've been writing the full length version of the founder,

the founders evolution book, which I hope will be coming out

next year. One of the things that has been a huge challenge

has been to maintain continuity from chapter to chapter. And I

want to kind of unpack the difference between those two

here in this episode, the difference between consistency

what you have succeeded by destroying time and time again

by thing, by saying hard words today and then saying what

tomorrow thinks, even though it contradict everything you said

today, that that railing against foolish consistency that has

been such a big part of Your success as a founder must be

harnessed by continuity. You see, especially once we get into

stages three and four and five, and we start getting bigger and

bigger enterprises around us, more and more people that we

depend on and that depend on us. If you embrace that lack of

consistency, that that desire for inconsistency that many of

us founders have. I was talking with a client the other day.

He's like, I drive to work a different way every time,

because I need the variety of my life. It's such a founder thing

to say, but we have to recognize the value of continuity. And I

would say that if you understand continuity, you can maintain the

inconsistency that you need to thrive and do your best work as

a visionary, as a founder, while also providing your team with

the momentum that they need to move forward. So here's the

difference, consistency is doing the same thing, especially a

foolish consistency is doing the same thing because you did it

before. And we all face this right? There's this pressure to

do it the same way, not only because of the natural inertia

and momentum that it has, but because to do it a different way

would be to admit that we were wrong, or at least it feels that

way. And so we all face this pressure Now, earlier in your

stages, there's a lot less pressure to do this, because

let's face it, you didn't make all the decisions that you're

challenging. You didn't design the industry the way that it is

now. You didn't create the status quo. But those tables

turn when we get into these later stages, in stage four and

in stage five, and dare I say, into stages six and seven, that

consistency is not consistency derived from what others did.

It's consistency derived from what you did, and you now have a

vested interest in protecting that consistency, because you're

the one who made so many of those decisions. And if we're

not careful, we can succumb to the little mindedness that

Emerson's talking about. Here. So consistency, again, is doing

things a certain way simply because we did them that way

beforehand. It what happens when we overvalue consistency is we

stop asking the question, why we we stop? We stop even we How do

I say we stop even recognizing that we are making assumptions

about the constraints on our business or our time and what we

do, and we're not willing to challenge those assumed

constraints because we don't even know that they exist

anymore. And so founders do a really great job at this just by

virtue of who they are and the way that they think I know for

me I can't be consistent. It's just I wish I could. There would

be so many ways that it would serve me so well in life, but it

is so hard for me to be consistent at the same time, I

do fight for continuity, and particularly in a team

environment, what continuity is, is a recognition of what you're

doing, right? It's a deep, probing insight into the things

that are working, not just that they are working, but why they

are working, and a recognition that inconsistency, for

inconsistency's sake, is actually foolish consistency. If

you believe that you need to be inconsistent just because you've

been inconsistent before, that's the same problem that Emerson is

tackling in this quote. And so continuity is the recognition

that, hey, we have got some things right. There are some

things that are working. You'll hear the saying you don't have

to reinvent the wheel. Sure, you don't have to reinvent the wheel

all the time, but sometimes you are. And continuity, I believe,

is the skill of knowing when to reinvent the wheel and when to

make it better. And so what we want to think about in terms of

continuity is, hey, how can I not just do the things that

we've done in the past, but how can I build on the success that

we've had in the past? How can we take what's already working

and make it better? How can we leverage the success we've had

not to protect it, not to kind of circle the wagons around it,

but to actually use the the capital there, in all its

different forms, the human capital, the financial capital,

the relational capital, the intellectual capital. How do we

take all of these things that we have figured out? How do we take

all the success that we had, and how do we actually put it to

work to move us forward? How do we use our success to challenge

the very basis of our success? And when you do that on a

continuous basis, when you are constantly taking a critical

look at why it is you do, what you do, what it is you're doing

that's working and what isn't working, what used to work and

what will no longer work, you're able to achieve a high degree of

continuity. Now, the benefit of that is, let me talk about the

flip side. If you don't do that, what happens is, I forget who it

was. I think it might be. Wickman described this as

organizational whiplash, but wow, I see this all the time.

You're driving in a direction, you're taking your whole team

with you, and then all of a sudden, you just yank the wheel

because you see something shiny over to the right, and then as

soon as you're about to get there, you yank the wheel to the

other direction, because you see something shiny to the left. And

when you're in the driver's seat, I mean, just imagine, like

if you're in a car and someone's doing that, if you're the one

doing it, you can anticipate it. You can lean into the turn. You

are holding the wheel and you are putting your feet on the gas

or brakes. You're in control. You can tolerate a far greater

degree of chaos when you're in control than when you're in the

passenger seat. And there's only one person who can have the

wheel on your organization, which means that you have to

think about what's happening for your passengers as well. And so

imagine being in the passenger seat, so yanking the wheel back

and forth, it's not a pleasant experience, and you're not going

to do your best work in that environment, and your team won't

do your team won't do their best work in that environment either.

Now, just to throw a bone to those of you out there, yeah,

there are times when you do need to yank the wheel. The whole

foolish consistency thing doesn't mean you always keep

driving in the same direction, sometimes as the visionary,

sometimes as the founder, sometimes as a CEO, it's your

job to make the really uncomfortable decision to yank

the wheel, because you see trouble coming. And so there are

times and occasions when yanking the wheel is necessary, but it's

not all the time, and it's not in all occasions. So how do we

know the difference? Well, we know the difference through

continuity. We know the difference by again, looking at

not just what works, but why it works, and how we can build on

that, and what happens when you can maintain some continuity.

And you'll see this. This is actually why vision, mission and

values work so well. This is why big, long term, 510, 1550, year

goals, why they're so. Effective is because they don't demand

consistency, right? That's so far away that if we do something

today and we do it different tomorrow, it doesn't matter at

all. Those big, long term goals don't demand consistency, but

they do demand continuity. And so here's my advice. I share

this with the founders I work with all the time, especially

stages four and five. And that is your job as the founder, your

job as the CEO, your job as that visionary leader is to paint an

ever clearer picture of a more beneficial horizon it. And

that's that's continuity, right there, right? It's not

consistency, right? We're not talking about taking every step

the exact same way to get there, but we are talking about a

continuity of direction, a continuous destination that's

out in the horizon waiting for us and continuing to lead people

there. So I want you to think about this as you're listening

today, as you're going about your day. How good are you at

fighting against that foolish consistency that has become the

hobgoblin of little minds. Where has that helped you in the past?

How have you succeeded because of your ability to push against

the grain and go against the common wisdom in your space? And

where is that causing you problems today, where has a

desire for the desire to push against consistency actually

caused you to unintentionally sacrifice continuity for you and

your team. Where are you pulling your team away from your long

term goals to chase some shiny object as a pull, as opposed to

pulling them through the uncertainty toward those long

term goals that you have for your team, Food for Thought for

today. I hope this episode was helpful for you. These are a

blast. I really enjoy getting to share with you guys directly. If

episodes like this are helpful, please let us know. We'd love

your feedback on it. If you have any questions, if there's

anything we can do to help you, we'd be glad. You, we'd be glad

to do that as well as you know your time and attention mean the

world to us. So I hope you got your time's worth out of this

conversation, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.